


But, Dean...I do

by Fenix21



Series: This Is How It Began... [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Belly Rubs, Birth, Curtain Fic, Fluff, M/M, Mpreg, Mpreg!Sam, Porn, Schmoop, Sick Sam Winchester, Swearing, Wincest - Freeform, not quite so gratuitous use of the word 'fuck'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-05 10:39:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3117041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus has been pestering his daddies for a baby brother, so Sam does some research and comes up with a way to give his son his birthday wish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I just couldn't let this one go without Sam getting his turn. God, I'm a glutton for punishment...

“Marcus! Young man, you get your bottom down these stairs this instant!”

Dean’s deep ‘dad’ voice careened through Bobby’s house, and Sam smiled despite the way the ghost of an urgent shivery need to obey tripped down his spine. He’d been responding to that tone for all twenty-nine years of his life, from John first and then from Dean as he’d acquired the ability to wrangled his younger brother with that same promise of reprisal if his demands weren’t met.

He didn’t envy their son for whatever misdemeanor was causing Dean to use it now.

The trip-fall rhythm of tiny feet came down the stairs and stuttered to a stop about two-thirds of the way down. Sam glanced up to see Marcus, hand on the banister, looking Dean nearly in the eye, timidly defiant. He suppressed a grin and kept his head down, watching the stand-off from under his lashes.

Dean folded his arms across his chest. “Young man, what did I say about cleaning up your dishes when you’re through eating?”

“To put them in the sink when I’m done,” Marcus’ small voice answered automatically.

He had only just turned four, in fact that was part of the reason they were at Bobby’s, to celebrate his birthday this weekend, but he was amazingly articulate, and Sam took no little amount of pride in that, nor in the fact that he was still standing his ground and staring down his father much like his Papa had done at his age. Sam disguised a chuckle with a clearing of his throat.

“And why didn’t you do that?” Dean asked, ignoring the choked off amusement coming from Bobby’s library.

“Benji said he’d do it,” Marcus’ said.

Sam looked up at this and Dean squinted at his son. “Who the h—? Who’s Benji?”

“My little brother,” Marcus answered, but he’d dipped his head down a little now and was stubbing the toe of his sneaker into the step he stood on. “My imaginary one.”

Dean’s arms loosened and he slid a look to Sam, who only shrugged back with a what’re-you-gonna-do smile. Dean shook his head and reached forward, catching Marcus under the arms. “Come’er, buddy.” Marcus immediately folded himself against his father as Dean lifted him. “So. How long has Benji been hanging around, huh?”

Dean carried Marcus into the library and sat down on the threadbare couch, cradling Marcus in one arm, and looking over the top of his head at Sam who pushed back from the stack of books he was perusing. Marcus snuggled into him and fiddled with the button on the front of his flannel shirt.

“I wished for him on my birthday candles, but…”

Dean sighed inaudibly, put a finger under his son’s chin and tilted his little face up. “Look, buddy, I know you want a baby brother, somebody to take care of and look after, but…well, your Papa and I can only have you.”

“But why? Can’t you get me a baby brother the same place you got me?” Marcus protested, little mouth pulled tight in a frown. 

Sam stood up at this and came over to sit beside Dean. “No, Monkey, we can’t.”

“Why not?” Marcus continued to pout.

Sam split a look with Dean. Marcus’ was still pretty innocent of what his fathers did for a living. They’d toned down the hunting to something that resembled a kind of nine-to-five job over the last four years, and it had been a mutual decision to not necessarily hide the family business from their son, but certainly not shove him into it either. He wasn’t afraid of the monsters in his closet, but Dean hadn’t given him a Glock to deal with them either, he’d given him a slingshot instead, knowing the room had been warded tight against anything that could threaten their son from the moment he’d come into their lives.

They’d never really explained to Marcus the curious circumstances of his birth and now was probably not the right time, yet, either.

Sam leaned forward and brushed a light brown strand from Marcus’ forehead. “You came from someplace very, very special, Marcus, and there was only one of you. We were very lucky to get you.”

This didn’t seem to assuage Marcus much, but characteristic of his other father, he just shrugged it off and pulled his chin from Dean’s grip. “Whatever.”

“Hey,” Dean said, a little sharply. “Not whatever. You were…pretty much a miracle, you hear? And we don’t get greedy about miracles, do we?”

“No, Daddy,” Marcus answered, more chaste. 

“Okay.” Dean planted a kiss on the top of his head, breathed in the soft scent of his son that was reminiscent of Sam and himself both and smiled. “Now, go clean up your dishes, and tell Benji he needs to not make promises he won’t keep.”

“Yes, Daddy.” Marcus slid off Dean’s thigh and scampered into the kitchen.

Dean rubbed a hand over his mouth and jaw. “Damn kid’s gonna be too smart pretty soon, Sam. Gonna want to know what really happened.”

Sam squeezed the back of Dean’s neck reassuringly. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Yeah, I guess we will.” Dean thrust his chin at the stack of books on the desk. “What are you researching now?”

Sam’s eyes skittered a little away from Dean’s, and he stood up just a little too fast, reaching to pull a stack of papers over the book that was open on the desk. Dean sat up straighter.

“Sam…” he warned.

“It’s nothing, Dean. Nothing. I promise,” Sam placated. “I was just a little curious, you know. What with Marcus going on about wanting a little brother the last year or so, and I kind of always wanted to…you know.”

Dean thrust up from the couch, face screwed tight in disbelief. “Oh my God, Sam! You cannot be serious.”

He pushed past Sam and flipped the book over. _Fertility Rites and Incantations of Eastern European Witchcraft—a translation._ Dean snapped the book closed and shoved it under Sam’s nose. “No way, Sam. No way! I am not doing that again.”

“Who said anything about you?” Sam asked, voice a little uncertain and small.

Dean froze, leaned back an inch, stared from Sam to the book and back again, eyes going round. “You?” Sam gave a little shrug and a nod. Dean gaped. “After what you saw me go through, and—and how Marcus was born, and you _want_ to try and do that?” 

Sam just continued to look at him. 

“I always knew you had a screw loose.” Dean threw down the book. “No. Out of the question, Sam. It’s too dangerous.”

“Dangerous, how?” Sam pressed. “You did just fine.”

“Just fine?” Dean stared at him. “What about any of that process was ‘just fine’?”

Sam looked away for a second. “Okay, it was rough going, I’ll admit. But you did okay…. You did great! And we know what we’re dealing with now, and—.”

“We have no idea what we’re dealing with, Sam! You have no idea what spell it was, where that witch was from—.”

“Actually, I did some research on her, and her ancestry is from northern Russia—.”

“Shut-up, Sam. No. Just. No. Not happening.”

“Dean—.”

But Dean was already out the front door, boots pounding down the porch steps, screen door bouncing in his wake. Sam sagged against the desk, looking out the dusty window as Dean stormed across the front yard toward the quonset hut garage.

“Papa?” Marcus was standing in the door to the kitchen, the plate with his crusts of PB&J still in his small hands. His lip was quivering. “Is Daddy mad?”

Sam was across the room in a second, kneeling down with Marcus tight in his arms. “Yeah, just a little, Monkey, but not at you, okay? Papa wanted to do something that Daddy…didn’t approve of.”

“Was it something that was gonna hurt you?”

Sam stilled in stroking Marcus’ thin shoulders. It was a revelation to him every time how his own son could be so perceptive. “Yeah, maybe just a little.”

“Daddy doesn’t like to see you hurt.”

Sam held Marcus closer and smiled sadly into his soft hair. “No, no, he certainly doesn’t.”

——

Dean slammed his fist against the Impala’s roof, then flattened it into a soothing stroke in the next second. “Sorry, baby. Didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

God _damn_! But that kid could still piss him off faster than a Fourth of July rocket going up. He never thought before he just bullheaded into something. He never looked before he leaped. That was what had landed them here in the first place, Sam not thinking things all the way through.

Dean kicked at a barrel full of used oil, flinched at the jarring ache it sent through his foot even through his steel toed boot, and then sagged suddenly, hands on hips, head bent. “Fuck…”

Who was he kidding? Sam thought everything through. Dean was the one that went off half cocked. If Sam was looking into this with any seriousness, then he’d probably had it on his mind a good long time, most likely since the first time Marcus had absently made the observation that he’d like to have a baby brother to look after and play with; maybe even before that.

Dean splayed a tentative hand across his belly. He’d healed up quick after Marcus was born, amazingly quick according to Marissa, so much so that he figured the witch may have had something to do with that, too. He’d pondered long and hard, while Marcus had been stirring up his innards, and afterward too, just why she’d cursed him with that particular spell, or if it was actually even supposed to _be_ a curse. It certainly wasn’t now. 

Despite the initial fumbling he and Sam had gone through, trying to figure out how to juggle Marcus with their lives, gyrating between packing in hunting all together to be with him and leaving him with Bobby or Jody so they could keep up the family business; he was something they definitely could not do without in their lives. It took them a good year, and a lot of ass-kicking from Bobby and Jody both, to get it all figured out, but they’d managed in the end. Marcus lived primarily with them except when a pressing job took them out of town for a few days  ( _Ain’t never leavin’ that kid alone for more than a week, Sam, you hear? None of that shit Dad pulled on us_ ) and then he would stay with Bobby, and Dean would usually drive all night just to try and get home to him a few hours sooner.

Dean dropped his hand. He loved that kid, as much as he loved Sammy, but there was no way he could bring himself to go through that hell again, and he wasn’t sure he could let Sam do it willingly either. Sam had been amazing through the whole thing, Dean had even admitted out loud that he wouldn’t have survived it if it hadn’t been for Sam, but he wasn’t sure he could provide that same support for Sam. Not that he wouldn’t do everything and anything for the kid. He just wasn’t that good at it. Never had been. So, Sam getting himself knocked up…? Yeah, probably not happening. And yet…

His fingers were rubbing absently at his belly again. He gave a dry bark of laughter. He had to be fucking _nuts_ to even think about this, right? No way was he doing this. No way. 

But if it came down to what his son wanted, and whether it was Dean or Sam that went through the pain and discomfort that he knew came with giving it? Dean would chose himself every time. 

—-

Sam was ready with a peace offering when Dean came back up the steps. He could tell by the rhythm of his footfalls on the hollow boards of the porch that he had calmed down considerably, but Dean had gotten pretty good at reigning in his temper over the last few years even when the anger was still bubbling fierce in his gut. A little hunt to help him work off the anger was just what he needed.

“Dean, I think I found a job. It’s only a few hours away, and Bobby said he’d watch—.”

“I’ll do it, Sam.”

Sam looked up from his laptop, news story hinting at zombie activity three hundred miles north over the border in Minnesota completely forgotten. His jaw hung loose. “What?”

Dean crossed his arms over his middle, shrugged a little, but met Sam’s wide-eyed stare. “I said, I’ll do it.”

“Dean, I….” Sam swallowed thickly. “I don’t want you to do it.”

Dean pulled a frown, straightening. “Why not?”

“Because, I—you—.”

“Sam, it’s okay. No, I’m not thrilled with the prospect, but you’re right. I did it once. And, hey? How much harder can two be, right? Marcus’ has been after us for over a year and—.”

“Dean.” Sam pushed up from the table slowly. “Stop.”

Dean looked his brother up and down. Sam had a look about him when Dean had missed some vital point in the conversation. It usually involve a bitch-face somewhere in the forties, but right now his face was just solemn, and a little defeated. 

“Okay,” Dean said slowly.

Sam ran his hands through his hair, heaving a long breath. “Dean, this isn’t about giving Marcus’ a baby brother.”

Dean frowned. “Then what exactly is it about?”

Sam sighed.

 _Yup, bitch-face forty-four._ Dean recrossed his arms and waited.

“It’s about _me_ having a baby.”

Fuck the pin. You could have heard a feather drop in the silence that followed.

Dean leaned forward, face screwing up in the effort to comprehend. “Excuse me?”

Sam swore softly and settled his big hands across his belly like it would help him prove his point. “Dean, _I_ want to have this baby.”

Dean didn’t miss how Sam referred to the concept of ‘this baby’ like it already existed inside him. He took a step forward. “Sam, I don’t understand. You _want_ to get knocked up?”

“Well, not when you put it like that,” Sam said distastefully. “But, yes, that’s the general idea. I don’t just want another baby. _I_ want to have it. Carry it. Feel it inside me….”

Dean was across the room now, standing right in front of Sam, close enough to see the thin glisten of tears collecting at the corners of his eyes, close enough to see the tension in his fingers as they dug slightly into his midsection, like he was empty inside and it was causing him pain.

“Jesus, Sam….” Dean pressed his palms flat over Sam’s hands, breath catching in his throat as he imagined—just for a second—how it would feel to hold the swell of his brother’s belly in his hands. “You have _no_ idea what you’re in for.”

Hope hitched hard in Sam’s stomach. “Then you’ll…?”

Dean looked up into his brother’s eyes. “Sam, are you sure we’re ready for this? I mean, not just _this_ ,” he pressed his hands against Sam’s a little more firmly, “but are we ready for another kid? Have we really thought this through?”

“You can’t think too hard about stuff like this, Dean,” Sam whispered, voice trembling with anxious hope. “But, like you said, how much harder can two be?”

Dean nodded, slow and deliberate. “Okay…. Okay, then.”

A second later he was attacked by a laughing, crying, six-foot-five baby octopus. Some things never changed.

——

“Are you boys out of your damn minds?!”

Bobby was wearing away at the bald spot beneath his ball-cap with his hand, and the thin linoleum of his floor with his continuous pacing. Jody stood by, leaning casually against the counter, a tiny smile on her lips. Sam and Dean sat at the kitchen table, across from one another, but their knees knocking together in mutual support.

They’d talked all afternoon, discussing Sam’s research, going over the compilation of spells he’d put together, figuring out some of the more interesting details—like exactly how they were both going to be genetic contributors—and Dean could find little fault with any of his brother’s very thorough preparations. Jody had come over for dinner and after Marcus was sent upstairs for his bath, they decided to break the news.

“I’d have at least thought you’d have better sense, Dean, after what you went through!” Bobby continued to rage.

Even though they’d kept Bobby out of the loop initially during Dean’s pregnancy, it wasn’t a hot minute before he was near breaking down the door of Jody’s cabin soon after Marcus was born because, though she’d kept her promise during the long weeks of his confinement, she wasn’t about to let Bobby go without meeting his grandson—or the nearest equivalent he’d ever have. Both boys had been roundly chastised and spilled the whole can of beans over whisky laced coffee while Bobby sat in the second rocker that had been installed in the living room giving Marcus a bottle and beaming at the tiny infant like he was the last and most precious thing in the world.

“I know, Bobby. And we’ve already talked about that…extensively, but it’s what Sam wants, and—.” Dean cast a look across the space at Sam, taking in the barely contained joy in his brother’s eyes, and the way he already seemed to glow just at the prospect of what they were about to attempt. “And I want it, too.”

Sam’s hand was flexing nervously against his denim clad thigh. Dean reached across and squeezed it. He had a right to be nervous, of more than just Bobby’s flustered outrage, because ‘attempt’ was the operative word here. Neither he nor Dean were exactly trained in witchcraft, and it wasn’t like they had easy access to one of whom they could ask instruction given their reputation for ganking them on a regular basis.

“Sam, you can’t—.”

“Bobby.” Jody pushed away from the counter and set both hands firmly on Bobby’s heaving shoulders. She turned him a little and nuzzled her nose into the side of his beard. He let out a heavy, pent up breath. “Bobby, just relax a minute, okay.” She soothed her hands over his shoulders. “I don’t think Sam would go into anything without having thought it through good and hard, and Dean wouldn’t let him do it if he wasn’t pretty damn certain he could take care of him while he was going through it. Now. From a mother’s perspective….” She choked just a tiny bit here but recovered quickly. “As a mother, I can tell you there’s nothing like that _feeling_ of life inside you, that connection that you make before your baby’s even born. I’m sure Dean would agree.”

She gave him a little nod, and Dean realized his hand had crept back up to rest over his belly again at the memory of all that movement inside of him before Marcus was born. Sure it had been painful, and he’d been a horse’s ass about actually acknowledging his son before his birth, but he couldn’t argue with Jody. There was no other feeling in the world like it. His mouth hitched up in a half smile, aimed mostly in Sam’s direction.

“Nope, nothing at all.”

Bobby shook his head, shoved at his ball-cap one last time. “All right. All right. Never could stop you boys from doin’ anything you had your heads set on anyway, I suppose.”

Dean shrugged easily and nodded. That was true enough, and especially so when their hearts were set on it, too.

——

“You ready for this?”

Dean was sitting on the edge of the king bed in Jody’s cabin which had pretty much become theirs over the last four years with Jody’s blessing. Sam was standing in the door, rubbing his clammy palms together, trembling a little all over. Dean stood up and took his hands, shaking them a bit to get his little brother’s undivided attention.

“Hey, Sam. Sammy. We don’t have to do this. Not right now. Not until you’re good and ready.”

Sam laughed. It was high and nervous. “Will I ever be?”

Dean shrugged a little and gave him a half-skeptical look. “Honest answer?”

“No. No, don’t. I think I know what you’ll say.”

Dean smiled. “Sam, just relax. Ain’t nothin’ to it. We’re gonna do what we always do, and if you decide…then we do it. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam breathed, squeezing Dean’s hands hard. “Yeah.”

“Sam?” Dean cupped Sam’s jaw and tried to draw his attention.

Sam’s eyes kept skittering to the copper bowl by the bedside and the candle that burned with the scent of musk and sandalwood beside it. The spell they had created was pretty ironclad, though definitely not what had been used on Dean unless the witch had somehow had quite awhile to prepare which he doubted. It was also fairly simple in the end: a rather eclectic collection of herbs, a latin incantation on Dean’s part, and of course the required genetic contributions of the parents. 

The latter part was what they were gearing up for right now.

“Sam.” Dean took Sam’s face in his hands and pulled it down. He’d meant to do this slow and kind of romantic, at least as much so as he could ever manage, for Sam’s sake; but it was looking like something a little more rough and tumble and attention getting might be in order. 

Dean nipped sharply at Sam’s lips making him gasp and instinctively open his mouth. Dean delved inside, aggressive, possessing Sam entirely in one strong sweep of his tongue. Sam moaned. 

“Dean….”

Dean tugged Sam toward the bed, letting his hands wander down to his brother’s sharp hipbones now that he had his full attention and possession of his mouth. He tugged at Sam’s shirt, pulling at buttons until it hung free on his shoulders, and Dean could skate his callused palms all over Sam’s broad chest and firm stomach right down to the waistband of his jeans that rode low on his hips. He curled his fingers under the band, brushing Sam’s lower belly with his knuckles, teasing. 

Sam rocked his hips forward with a groan and grabbed Dean’s shoulders, wrenching him closer, tearing his mouth away from his brother’s only to relocate it on Dean’s throat with a hot, sucking vengeance that caused Dean to groan long and low, and his fingers it tighten at Sam’s waistband. 

“Baby boy’s impatient,” Dean teased in a voice gone hoarse with need.

Sam didn’t answer except to bite down harder into the juncture of Dean’s neck and shoulder, hard enough that it would bruise come morning for sure, but Dean didn’t care. His cock was rock hard and ready, standing at attention and straining against the rough denim confining him, so he was pretty much just as impatient as Sam. He jerked at Sam’s button and zipper and thrust his hand down, cupping Sam’s length, squeezing it tauntingly, kneading and rocking, tugging until Sam was panting and gasping at his throat. 

“Dean, please….”

Sam was so good at begging. Dean loved it. It made him so hard his cock jerked in his jeans and he almost gasped in pain.

“Better get that out before you bust something,” Sam whispered hot against Dean’s skin. His hands went down to undo Dean’s jeans and shove them downward just as he slid to his knees and put his mouth on Dean’s cock through the thin cotton of his boxers.

“Fuck, Sammy….” Dean’s knees shook while Sam mouthed him through the fabric, getting it warm and wet and teasing him so that he thought he was going to die before he got any release. Sam pushed him gently backward until he felt the bed behind him and collapsed on it at his brother’s urging. Sam crawled up over him,  stripping off his shirt, jeans still invitingly open, and tugged Dean’s boxers and jeans away.

“Shirt,” he commanded, and Dean yanked his shirt over his head and tossed it as Sam bent back down and put his wet mouth on Dean’s naked flesh. 

Dean bucked upward, cock sliding against Sam’s wet lips. “Jesus…fuck! Sam….”

Sam grinned devilishly and twirled his tongue around Dean’s swollen head, working the slit with the very tip and making Dean writhe against the sheets. Dean reached down and grabbed the back of Sam’s head, jerking him away.

“Sam…you gotta stop. I can’t….”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Sam said, shimmying out of his jeans and putting one knee on the edge of the bed beside Dean’s hip.

Dean looked up at him, chest heaving. “No, we certainly wouldn’t.”  

He reached up and grabbed Sam’s shoulders, twisting them both in one powerful move, so that Sam was beneath him and Dean kneeling between his spread thighs. Sam stared up in awe and Dean stopped for a second.

“What?”

“You. You just never cease to amaze me how…powerful, and beautiful you are,” Sam breathed.

Dean flushed all the way down his chest with Sam’s reverent admiration and dropped forward to kiss him thoroughly. He drank in Sam’s mouth, his breath, the scent that was only and entirely his baby brother, and then moved downward, licking, nipping, biting, laving long hot strokes with his tongue over puckered, needy flesh until he came to the thick, hard, twitching glory of Sam’s cock. He settled his mouth around Sam’s velvety head and sucked softly, almost lovingly, moving his tongue in tender little urging pushes against it until Sam was whining and begging for Dean to let him come.

“Not just yet, baby boy,” Dean whispered over Sam’s aching flesh. “Got more planned for you.”

Dean drug his middle finger through the thick little pool of cum on the sheets that was dripping from his own throbbing cock and, without ceremony, pushed it up inside Sam’s hole. Sam cried out at the sudden intrusion, but it wasn’t in pain. He thrashed and then fucked himself down on Dean’s hand.

“More!” Sam demanded, gasping. “More, Dean….”

Dean obliged his brother with another finger, twisting up inside him, and Sam fucked himself down hard, all the way to the webbing of Dean’s fingers. Sam reached up and grabbed Dean’s shoulders, yanking him downward.

“More, Dean!”

Dean gasped and had to squeeze hard at the base of his own cock to keep from coming at the hoarse and broken demands of his writhing baby brother beneath him. “Fuck, Sammy.”

“Yes! Fuck me, Dean. Please! Fuck me…” Sam nearly shouted.

Dean had meant to prepare Sam more, open him up wider, but they were both way too damn close to the edge. Dean was going to be lucky if he could even get in one good thrust before he got swept away on the orgasm he could feel baying loud and deep in his belly and balls. 

“Okay, Sam, okay. I got you,” Dean murmured.

He withdrew his fingers to a pained whimper from Sam and then settled down in the cradle of Sam’s hips, his cock pushing eagerly between Sam’s flexing buttocks, pressing firmly against Sam’s still tight ring of muscle.

“Sammy…?”

Sam gripped the bed with clawed hands and pulled himself downward in one smooth thrust, rising up on his heels and impaling himself all the way to the root of Dean’s cock.

“Fuck!” Dean shouted, head falling forward, whole body straining to resist the impending wave of heat boiling in his belly. “Sam, I can’t—.”

“Don’t! Just. Don’t!”

Dean pulled back and thrust in again, and then again. There was no rhythm. It was too late for that. His balls were pressed up close to him and his cock was throbbing, hips juttering an unsteady plea for release. He grappled for every last ounce of control he had and gasped out,

“Sammy?”

Sam’s eyes flickered to the copper bowl, the candle, back to Dean’s questioning gaze. He gave a quick, sharp nod. 

The feeling that flooded Dean was unlike anything he could ever remember experiencing before. He was suddenly and intimately aware of Sam’s body, hot and tight, squeezing down around his too full cock, and how if he finished this, if he spilled himself inside Sam in the next few seconds and let fall those memorized phrases waiting patiently at the back of his brain, he would be filling Sam up in a way he never had before.

“Dean?”

Sam was reaching for him, hands fluttering and uncertain because Dean had stilled above him suddenly without realizing it. Dean dropped his head down, nuzzled Sam’s open palm. 

“Jesus, Sam…. Gonna fill you up,” he whispered. “Gonna fill you so full—.”

“Dean…” Sam was twisting again on the sheets, fucking himself hard on Dean’s cock and jerking himself in the same uneven rhythm. 

“Gonna come inside you, baby boy. Fill up your belly—.”

“Dean!”

Sam screamed as he came, long thick spurts of pearlescent white roping out and across his taut belly. Dean followed a second later, ramming himself flush with Sam’s ass as he came, deep and throbbing inside his brother.

“Now, Dean,” Sam gasped, giving Dean’s shoulder a little shake. “Do it now….”

Dean’s arms were shaking under his own weight. His vision was still half whited out and he was gasping for much needed oxygen in the aftermath of his orgasm, but he managed to pull together the phrases floating in his brain and pressed his palm flat into the pool of still warm, sticky fluid gathered in the hollow of Sam’s belly. He gave a quick nod to Sam who reached a shaking hand to dip the candle flame to the contents of the copper bowl, and then Dean let the latin flow off his tongue in as clear and steady a voice as he could manage.

At the last words, the flame in the bowl leapt skyward and threw off a shower of golden sparks before settling down to smoldering embers. Beneath him, Sam hissed suddenly, curling in around the pressure of Dean’s hand on his belly, shoulders rising up off the bed, breathing hard like he’d been sucker punched in the gut, which Dean reminisced was just about what it had felt like all those years ago. After a moment, he dropped back, chest heaving, sweat pouring off of him.

“Sam?” Dean asked, voice a little shaky. “Sammy, you okay?”

Sam just lay there for a moment, breathing in and out, focusing on the pressure of Dean’s palm against his skin until he slowly became aware of a knot in his belly that seemed to be pulling tighter and tighter under Dean’s hand. He blinked and looked up into his brother’s worried face.

“I’m good. It’s okay,” he said, still out of breath. 

“Did—did it work?”

Sam focused on the funny knotting sensation in his belly. It wasn’t uncomfortable…yet, but it did feel strange. He wasn’t positive this was what it was suppose to feel like, but he guessed they’d know soon enough. He brought both his hands up to rest over Dean’s and smiled just a little. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I think it did.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the spell was successful, and baby gets a name...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this one's going a little sideways on me, and slowing down quite a bit; but I think that's because Sam would go slow with this--as slow as he could anyway--in order to enjoy it. Unlike Dean, who just kind of bull headed his way through to the end...

If there was any doubt that their compilation of amateur magic had taken root, it was allayed within forty-eight hours. 

Sam was on his knees in the bathroom for the third time since breakfast and it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. He’d gone past throwing up anything productive five minutes ago and started dry heaving until he could hardly catch his breath. Dean was bent over beside him, one arm looped around his spasming chest and the other holding back his sweat damp hair.

“Jesus, Sammy….” Dean pressed his cheek against Sam’s shoulder, shuddering as his body heaved yet again in a vain attempt to empty itself when there was nothing left.

“Daddy…?” 

Dean’s head snapped around at his son’s timid, frightened voice. “Hey, baby….”

“Daddy, is Papa okay?” Marcus’ chubby little fingers were twisting in the long fuzzy ears of his favorite grey rabbit that he was holding close up under his quivering chin.

“Fuck, Dean….” Sam gasped, still gripping the edge of the sink in one hand and the toilet in the other. “Get him outa here. Don’t…wanna scare him.”

“Papa?” Marcus had tears in his eyes now. He never heard Sam swear. Sam was really careful about it when he was around, a lot more so than Dean managed to be.

Dean was torn between holding his little brother until this had passed, and wrapping his son up tight and comforting him against this horrific scene that he’d stumbled in witness to. Sam decided for him and gave him a rough shove in the ribs with his elbow.

“Go!”

Dean stood up reluctantly and swiveled to take Marcus up in his arms. Sam caught the bathroom door with his long reach and slammed it behind them on their way out. Dean flinched when he heard Sam heaving yet again.

“Daddy?” 

Marcus was shaking all over in Dean’s arms, tears dripping down his round little cheeks. Dean dabbed them away with the soft fur of his rabbit’s ear. “Hey, hey, baby…come on. Let’s go to the kitchen, okay. Want some chocolate milk?”

Marcus shook his head and buried his face in Dean’s neck. Dean closed his eyes and carried Marcus out into the hall and back to his own room where they could barely hear Sam retching. Dean flipped on the nightlight carousel on his dresser even though the soft morning sun was filtering through the window and sat down in the rocking chair to listen to the tinny little tune playing in time to the turning shapes.

“Is Papa gonna die?” Marcus whispered against Dean’s neck.

“What?” Dean started, and his arms tightened around Marcus. “No! No, he’s not going to die, baby. He’s just really sick right now.”

“Am I gonna catch it?”

“No,” Dean chuckled sadly. “This isn’t something you can catch.” Dean shifted Marcus until he was sitting down on his thigh and turned his son’s tearstained face up. “There’s nothing to be scared of, okay? Papa’s going to be fine. I won’t let anything happen to him. Ever.”

Marcus nodded, but snuggled into Dean’s chest nonetheless and held his rabbit close. Dean rocked him for a few minutes until he felt the familiar sagging weight that meant Marcus had drifted off. He stood up and laid him carefully in the large beanbag in the corner of the room where Marcus took most of his afternoon naps  now, then he pulled the bedroom door mostly closed and made straight for the master bath again.

The door was still shut, but Dean couldn’t hear Sam heaving behind it anymore. He knocked once and then turned the nob. “Sam?”

Sam was propped up against the claw foot tub, t-shirt stripped off and balled up beside him, head tilted back against the tub rim, chest rising and falling in shallow breaths like he was still trying to keep himself from throwing up.

“Is he okay?” Sam asked, voice rough from all the vomiting.

“Yeah, he’s okay. He’s sleeping. Early nap.”

“You’ll never get him laid down this afternoon if you leave him,” Sam warned, trying to crack a weak smile. “You know that.”

“Yeah, I know.” Dean turned on the cold tap and soaked a washcloth, wrung it out, and knelt down beside Sam to gently wipe his face and neck and chest. “How ya doin’? 

“Fine.” Sam’s hand crept across his belly, fingers flexing a little. Dean reached to cover it.

“Everything feeling okay in there?” he asked.

Sam cracked an eye, lolled his head to the side. “I guess. I mean, I’m not too sure what it’s _supposed_ to feel like.”

Dean gave a bitter laugh. “Like you’ve got a rock in your belly that’s growing so fast you can almost feel it pushing all your insides out of the way.”

Sam grimaced and nodded. “Yeah, I think that about sums it up.”

“I think we should call Marissa.”

“We’ve already got an appointment next week with Eliza,” Sam countered.

Dean shook his head, frowning. “Yeah, but it wasn’t like this for me.”

Sam laughed, but there was no humor in it. “It was exactly like this. You just don’t remember.”

“No, Sam, I do remember. Enough, anyway,” Dean said. “I was sick, sure, but not like this. Not this early and not this bad.”

Sam just shrugged. “Everybody’s different, I guess.”

“Yeah, well…. You think you can stand up?”

“Think so.” Sam lifted his head and let Dean catch most of his weight under his arms and draw him up slowly.

“There you go. Easy does it. Just take it slow, okay. Your center of gravity is probably already thrown to hell. The last thing I need is you falling and breaking something or getting a concussion,” Dean grumbled.

Sam straightened up with effort. “Dean, I’m not an invalid. I think I can make it across the floor.”

“Tell me that in three days,” Dean retorted. 

“Dean—.”

“Damn it, Sammy….” Dean pulled Sam’s arm around his shoulders and guided him in to sit on the bed. “Don’t argue with me. You watched over my every move when I went through this, and yes, despite the fact that I bitched about it every second, I did appreciate it, and I fully intend to do exactly the same thing for you, so just—.” Dean thrust his hands into the air. “Shut-up.”

Sam was sitting on the edge of the bed grinning. Dean glared at him. 

“What?”

“Well, if I’d known getting pregnant was the way to get you to appreciate me, I’d have done it a lot sooner,” Sam teased.

“Oh, don’t you dare…” Dean threatened, but there was a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. He rubbed his hands over his hair, huffed a bemused laugh, and dropped onto the bed beside Sam. He bumped Sam’s shoulder gently, eyes skating down his bare chest to where Sam’s hand still rested over his belly. It was probably because he was so tall, or maybe because a physical fight hadn’t been involved in the conception this time, but there was no real visible swelling yet, just a kind of…softening around his middle. Dean reached a tentative hand forward. “Can I…?”

“Sure you can,” Sam said, astonished that Dean felt he had to ask, and dropped his hand away.

Dean splayed his fingers across Sam’s belly, pressing gently, feeling for…he didn’t even know what, but Sam sighed at the touch. 

“Good?” Dean asked.

“Yeah. Feels nice,” Sam said. “I think I’m already starting to understand why it felt so good to you.”

Dean nodded absently and used his free hand to gently push Sam back onto the bed. Dean stretched out on his side and started rubbing his hand in a close circle over Sam’s middle. “Still doin’ okay?”

Sam nodded, eyes starting to drift closed. “Yeah. Don’t think I have anything left to throw up anyway.”

Dean continued his circles, and Sam let his eyes close all the way. Within minutes, Sam was snoring softly again, and Dean just let him sleep. Tossing his cookies like that was exhausting, Dean remembered better than he liked to. He continued his slow circles on Sam’s belly, leaning on an elbow and keeping half an ear to the hall in case Marcus woke up.

He had a niggling of fear deep in his gut, though he couldn’t site anything more than this early onset of vicious morning sickness to ground it. He knew Sam was probably right, and Jody had even cautioned them, that no two pregnancies were identical, so it was going to be hard to determine what was ‘normal’ for Sam. Dean sure as hell hoped this wasn’t it for Sam’s sake, though, because it was going to be a _long_ ten weeks if it was. He didn’t envy his brother the gauntlet he was about to run, the cramps, the constant painful movement, the feeling like your skin was two sizes too small all the time, and hardly being able to get any useful rest. 

There was a bit of an upside, though, he supposed as he pressed his palm flat against Sam’s warm skin. Though Dean hadn’t been able to appreciate it, there was something entirely unique about the feeling of having something alive inside of you—in a good way, of course, because supernaturally speaking you could have a lot of things alive inside of you in a really bad way—and Sam would be one to recognize that before it was too late to enjoy it.

Dean leaned in and pushed his nose against Sam’s flat belly, planting a soft kiss. “Baby, you have no idea how lucky you are to be inside of this big guy. No idea at all.”

Dean rested his head against Sam’s hip, closed his eyes and resumed making circles, and completely missed the enormous smile that spread over his bother’s face.

——

Ultimately, Sam got his way—nothing unusual there—and they held off on seeing Marissa. Sam still threw up nearly everything he ate and by the time Dean got him into Eliza’s office a week and a half after they had performed the spell—because he couldn’t quite reconcile his mind with ‘impregnating’ his brother just yet—he’d dropped six pounds, looked pretty much like death warmed over and Eliza didn’t ask any questions before hooking him up to an IV of saline and nutrients. 

“Sam, you should have let Dean bring you in sooner,” she admonished gently. Her demeanor was softer and a little sweeter than Marissa’s had been, but she was no less firm when she needed to make a point. “You’re verging on dehydration and your baby is going to be the one to suffer if you can’t take in any food and keep it down. So, don’t let it get this bad again, okay?”

Sam nodded, cheeks coloring in embarrassment that he had probably just gone and done what he accused Dean of before Marcus was born. He felt a hand against his neck, knuckles brushed his jaw and then his warm cheeks. 

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re not used to this, any more than I was,” Dean said quietly. “It’ll be okay.”

Eliza backed off a bit. “I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean to come on quite so heavy. I just know that this isn’t going to be easy and the first trimester is the most important which, if this is operating like your brother’s pregnancy, you should be pushing most of the way through in the next couple of days. I just want your baby to have every chance, okay?” Sam nodded again. “Now, I can give you some medication to help with the nausea that won’t bother the baby. I also want to give you a script for some vitamins which you should already have been on but better late than never.”

She scratched out a script on a small piece of paper and handed it to Dean. “Get those?”

He nodded and folded it into his wallet. 

“Okay, are we ready for our first look?” Eliza smiled.

Sam’s heart skipped a beat and any answer he was going to give got stuck in his throat. Dean laughed softly and nudged his shoulder. 

“Yeah, I think he is. It’s all he’s been talking about for the last week.”

“Have not!”

Dean grinned at Sam’s bitch-face. “What is that? A new combo of twenty-one and fifteen?”

Sam gave his brother a light punch on the shoulder. “Shut up, jerk.”

“Bitch.”

Eliza was watching them in bewildered amusement. Dean shrugged a little self-consciously. 

“It’s a thing.”

She nodded and held her arm out toward the exam room off her main office. “This way, and we’ll get a peek at that baby.”

Sam divested himself of his shirt and laid back on the bed while Eliza pulled her equipment cart closer. Dean hovered at Sam’s side, a little uncertain what to do with himself or his hands. Sam reached out to him.

“Hey,” he said softly. “You’re acting more nervous than I feel.”

“Well, it’s a little different from this angle, I guess. It was easy to know what was going on when it was going on inside me, now that it’s you….”

“You’re worrying.” It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t anything Sam hadn’t expected. Dean always worried. Dean wouldn’t be Dean if he didn’t.

“Okay, little cold here,” Eliza said, squeezing out a generous amount of gel onto Sam’s belly. It had finally started looking like there was something in there a couple of days ago, though it could be more easily contributed to too much pasta and not enough exercise just yet. Sam’s muscles rippled with a shiver from the chill of the gel. “Sorry. It’ll warm up in a second,” Eliza apologized as she moved the gel around with the transducer and flipped on the monitor. “Okay…”

The screen was full of fuzzy, indistinct black and white images as far as either Sam or Dean were concerned, but to Eliza it was obvious she was pretty content with whatever she was seeing. “Everything looks like it’s progressing well. I’d say we’re looking at just shy of fourteen weeks development here, so the timeline is about right according to Marissa’s notes.”

“Everything is…normal?” Dean asked carefully.

Eliza cast him a look and reassuring smile. “Yes. Everything is perfectly normal. You’ve got a happy _human_ baby in there.”

Dean let out a breath, and Sam squeezed his hand.

“See? Told you everything would be fine.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re just always right. I suppose I should get used to it by now,” Dean said, but it was without any heat. He hadn’t really been too worried, confident in his and Sam’s abilities, but it was a relief to have it confirmed nonetheless.

“Can you…can you tell what it is, yet?” Sam asked, a little shy.

“You mean boy or girl? Not just yet. We’ll schedule another ultrasound for next week, and provided the growth rate continues as expected we should be able to tell then.” Sam nodded, but Eliza didn’t miss the slightly crestfallen look to his face. “You can hear it, though.”

She flipped another switch and the room was suddenly filled with a steady, quick paced _thum-thump_ rhythm. Sam’s eyes went slightly wide. 

“Is it supposed to be that fast?”

“It’s a bit higher than normal, but a growth rate like that is probably a bit of a strain, so I’m not really surprised. Marcus’ heartbeat was about in the same range,” Eliza replied.

Sam looked up at his brother who was staring into the empty space above Sam. “Dean, that’s….”

“Yeah, Sam. Yeah it is,” Dean said, and the words sounded almost like a prayer.

Dean couldn’t figure it. The sound in the room was nothing beyond an electronically enhanced rhythm that supposedly represented the baby’s heartbeat, but it was having the effect that one of Beethoven’s finest symphonies might have on someone who had been deaf and was suddenly able to hear for the first time in their life. He hadn’t reacted like this with Marcus. Far from it, in fact. He’d shied away from anything that had made the life inside of him more distinct and real. 

This simple heartbeat, though, that was proof of the real living being inside Sam that he and his brother had purposefully set out to create, was nearly enough to bring Dean to his knees.

“Dean?” 

Sam had rolled up on his elbow and had one of Dean’s hands clasped closely between his own. “Dean, are you all right?”

Dean sniffed, nodded, and gave Sam a quick smile. “Yeah, fine. Why?”

Sam answered by reaching up to brush a tear from under Dean’s right eye, smiling gently.

Dean stared at the collected moisture on Sam’s fingertips for a second and then said sheepishly, “Well, look whose being the girl now, huh?”

——

“So, which one of us is going to break the news?” Sam asked on their way home from his second appointment with Eliza a little over a week later. He shifted in the Impala’s seat as the baby—his and Dean’s _daughter_ —squirmed inside him and kicked at something tender. 

Dean reached over automatically and stroked the spot where Sam’s hand was pressing against the now obvious swell of his belly. “You mean that he’s going to get a little sister instead of a brother?”

Sam sighed and leaned his head back. “Yeah. You think he’ll be disappointed?”

Dean continued stroking. “Nah. I think he’ll think it’s great.”

Sam slid his brother a look from the corner of his eye. “What about you?”

“Me?” Dean looked over in surprise. “I’m fucking thrilled, Sam.”

“Really?”

“Sure!”

“Huh.”

“What does that mean?” Dean stopped his stroking for a second and frowned over at Sam. 

“I just never figured you for a girl’s type of guy.” Sam shrugged.

“Me?” Dean feigned a wounded look. “I was a born ladies man, are you nuts?”

“I mean with all the frilly dresses, and pink things, and… _other_ things. I guess I figured you’d be a bit freaked.”

“Sammy…I’ll love her no matter what,” Dean chided gently. “She’s ours. But you might be short changing the tyke, you know? She might want to drive Indy cars and work under greasy engines and play ball with her old man soon as truss up in a prom dress.”

Sam grinned at the image of Dean leaning over the engine block of the Impala, a little girl in blond pigtails beside him on an overturned crate debating the interval of timing chains while Marcus leaned up against a tire and read Niche and Poe.

“What’re you grinning at?” Dean asked, eyes narrowing.

“Nothing.” Sam shook his head. “Just…you’re probably right about her.”

 

Marcus was waiting at the screen door, bouncing on the balls of his feet when Dean and Sam pulled up. He banged open the door and came racing across the porch, catapulting himself into Sam’s arms as he started up the steps.

“Oof!” Sam let out a heavy breath at Marcus’ impact. “I think you grew just in the time we were gone, Monkey.”

Dean started up the stairs, smiling.

“Dean, can you, uh…?” Sam grimaced over the top of Marcus’ head motioning for Dean to take the boy.

“Sam?” Dean reached out immediately, and Marcus pushed off into his arms. “You okay?”

Sam gripped the banister for a second, feeling winded. “Yeah. He’s just getting heavy, I guess.”

Dean shifted Marcus’ slight body to his other side. The kid was light as a feather just like Sam had been at his age. “Come on, buddy, let’s go in and find Gramps, huh?”

Sam took a couple of steps upward, going slow, but the winded feeling stuck with him, and he started to feel a little light headed. He stopped, holding the banister tighter. “Dean?”

Dean turned, saw the sudden pallor in Sam’s face and the glassy look I his eyes he got just before he passed out, and let Marcus slide down his side. “Marcus, down. Now.”

Marcus let go and dropped to the step, recognizing his father’s stern ‘don’t ask questions’ voice. Dean was down the stairs and had his arm around Sam and was taking his weight to help him in less than a heartbeat.

“Thought I heard you boys pull up—.” Bobby was at the door and stopped when he saw Sam’s grey face and the way he was leaning hard into Dean. He held the door wide when they reached the top. “Dean, what happened? Is Sam okay?

“I don’t know. He just suddenly looked like he was about to pass out.”

“‘M fine,” Sam said, voice thready between gasps. “Just…can’t get…my breath.”

Dean lowered Sam onto the couch and sat down beside him, taking hold of his hand and brushing his hair from his face. “Sam, you with me?”

Sam took a deep, slow breath and let it out. “Yeah. I am.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “I’m okay now. I just…felt winded back there all of a sudden.”

Dean pressed his fingers under Sam’s jaw to his pulse point and frowned. “Your heart’s beating awfully hard, Sam. Like you ran a marathon.”

“Must be the extra weight,” Sam said, trying to joke. Dean just scowled at him. “Really, Dean, I’m okay. I probably just need to eat something. I didn’t have a whole lot for breakfast, remember? I was too nervous.”

Dean conceded with an uneasy roll of his shoulders and looked back at Bobby.

“How about some open faced roast beef sandwiches for lunch?” Bobby asked, reading Dean’s look. “Jody fixed a pot roast last night and there’s plenty left. I think I’ve even got some mashed taters left,” he said, waggling his brows mischievously at Marcus’ who could live and die by a bowl of mashed potatoes. 

“Sounds great, Bobby. Thanks,” Sam said.

“You gonna come help me, Marcus?” Bobby asked, holding a hand out to the boy.

Marcus shifted from one foot to the other, face gyrating between worried and expectant as he looked from Dean to Sam and back again. “So, am I gonna have a baby brother?”

Sam grinned and rolled his eyes. Dean shook his head, sighing. “Mind like a steel trap, that one,” he said.

“He is his father’s son,” Sam chided.

“Yeah, I suppose you can claim that one.”

“I wasn’t talking about me,” Sam said gently. 

Dean blushed a little, like he always did when Sam tried to remind him that he wasn’t the only one with smarts in the family gene pool. He held out his arm to Marcus and the boy darted over and snugged up underneath it and turned up anxious wide eyes to his fathers. 

“Well, buddy, as it turns out…you’re going to have a little sister.”

Marcus stared for a second, little mind rerouting and computing almost visibly on his face as he took in the information and processed it. Dean waited for a full minute, then gave him a squeeze. “What do you think, huh?”

“A girl?” Marcus asked in a carefully even tone that made Sam almost laugh at the level of seriousness in it. “Will she still want to play with me?”

“Sure she will,” Sam said. “Grammy Jody is a girl, and she plays with you all the time.”

Marcus nodded slowly at this new piece of information while he thought about his grammy showing him how to properly aim his new water pistol, and taking him on hikes around their cabin and pointing out the different animals and plants. Grammy Jody was pretty cool, and she knew a lot of stuff.

“Okay,” he finally said with a serious little single nod. “But I’ll have to watch out for her double, ‘cause she is a girl after all.”

Sam burst out laughing, and Dean just shook his head and planted a kiss in his son’s soft hair. “I’m sure Grammy Jody will have something to say on that subject. Now, scoot. Go help Bobby fix us some lunch.”

Marcus raised up on tiptoe to press a kiss to Dean’s cheek and scampered off after Bobby.

“That went well,” Sam said, looking after Marcus and Bobby and absently rubbing at his belly.

“You doing okay?” Dean asked, tipping his chin at Sam’s massaging hand.

“Mmm. Fine. It feels like she’s doing continuous somersaults or something. Kinda weird. Makes me feel a little…car sick?”

Dean nodded. “Just wait until she gets some weight on her, then it’s going to feel more like you got _run over_ by the car.”

“Fun.”

“Don’t worry,” Dean slid in closer and laid a hand on the still low swell of his brother’s belly. “I’m sure you’ll breeze through it, and a hell of a lot better than I did.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Dean. You did good.”

“Not as well as you are.” Dean leaned back into the cushions, pulling Sam with him and settling his cheek against the top of Sam’s head as he turned over more fully onto Dean’s shoulder. “You’re better at everything, Sam. You’re smarter, more patient, definitely more level headed, and if it weren’t for you…” Dean slid a look toward the kitchen where he could hear Bobby patiently instructing Marcus on the proper way to warm gravy so it didn’t separate or lump. “If it weren’t for you, Marcus wouldn’t even be here.”

“Come on, Dean, don’t think like that. It’s in the past. He’s here and that’s all that matters,” Sam soothed.

“But…I wanted you to cut him out, Sammy,” Dean said, voice gone hoarse with pent up angst. “He was a _life_ , a real, live, living human being—inside me!—and I wanted you to cut him out.”

Sam shifted so he could look up into Dean’s face. “Dean. Don’t do this. Come on. It’s okay. It really doesn’t matter now.” He took hold of Dean’s hand and pressed it fully against he side of his belly. “Just focus on the now, okay? Focus on our daughter, and how much you love and adore our son. Okay?”

Dean nodded, the lump in his throat grown too big to force words around. He shook his head, angry and bewildered at these sudden emotional reactions. For Christ sake, Sam was the one pregnant and _he_ was the one crying. How fucked up was that? He swiped a hand over his eyes and changed the subject.

“So, what do you want to call her?”

Sam let the shift in conversation slide, understanding that Dean was having a difficult time dealing with his own emotions at the moment. “I was kind of toying with…Jo?”

Dean’s breath hitched just a fraction.

“Or not,” Sam said quickly. “I was also thinking about maybe ‘Emily’ or ‘Tessa’—.”

“No.” Dean closed his eyes for just a second, then opened them again and smiled softly. Sam could see memory reflected there, grief for the one woman who might have been the perfect match for his brother on every level but whose future together with him Dean had been forced to encompass in just one kiss before she sacrificed herself to save them. “Jo is…good. Joanna Beth Winchester.”

“Okay,” Sam said slowly, carefully watching his brother’s face. “Jo it is, then.”

Dean nodded, pressed a kiss to Sam’s hair and then just sat and held him tight until Bobby called them for lunch.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is fluff and pity parties, porn and angst, and a whole lot of hurt and insecure Sammy...

“Sam, sit down.”

Sam clenched his jaw tight against a sharp epithet. Dean had been hovering since day one of this venture and even though Sam was well accustomed to his brother’s sometimes obsessive protective tendencies when it came to him, he wasn’t quite ready for the kick into overdrive when Eliza had diagnosed his shortness of breath and chronic fatigue as more than just the usual symptoms of a tough pregnancy but as an indication of inordinate strain on his heart.

“I’m the one that got fucking electrocuted,” Dean had raged. “And you’re the one stuck with the weak heart?!”

Dean’s anger had purely been him venting the sudden terror that they had bitten off a lot more than they could chew much less swallow until Eliza had assured him that Sam would be just fine so long as he took it easy and avoided any and all strenuous activity—a list that Dean had narrowed down to pretty much anything except sitting idly on the couch or laying in bed with a book. 

Apparently, the issue was a long dormant birth defect that would normally never have presented except that the incredible strain on both Sam’s system and the baby’s, because of the extreme growth rate, was aggravating it.

“Is that going to cause any problems with…the birth?” Sam had asked hesitantly.

“Oh, come on, Sam! You can’t possibly be considering this? You saw what I went through! You need to let her do a C-section. Especially now!” Dean had paced Eliza’s office, hands unconsciously brushing back and forth across his spiky hair, and working at his temples and jaw while he muttered under his breath about ridiculously stubborn baby brothers.

“Sam should be able to deliver without an undo problems,” Eliza had said. “We’ll monitor him closely, of course, but this is not unheard of, and many women have successfully delivered babies under this kind of cardiovascular stress. The good thing is that the issue will, in all likelihood, resolve itself just as soon as the baby is born.”

Dean had muttered and grumbled some more, far from being mollified, but had relented in the end under the assurance that Eliza could and would act at the first sign of a problem with no life threatening consequences to Sam or the baby.

“Dean, I think I can manage to pour us orange juice,” Sam said as evenly as possible, but his calm was betrayed by the baby jabbing him somewhere in the vicinity of a kidney. He spat out a breath and hunched over the half full glass in front of him, counter gripped tight in one hand, glass bottle under breaking pressure in the other.

“That’s it,” Dean said, dropping the spatula onto the griddle with a clatter and grabbing the juice bottle from Sam’s clawed fingers. “Sit. The fuck. Down.”

He took Sam’s elbow and walked him over to the table where he lowered him down slow and easy and then squatted down to rub circles on Sam’s taut belly. “You’re already turning grey just standing there, little brother.”

“I was not.” Sam arched his back and tried instinctively to twist away from another jab to his lower back.

“Papa?” Marcus was standing in the hall, rabbit in hand, hair still ruffled from sleep and dressed in his blue jammies with spring green teddies printed all over. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sam snapped under duress of another sharp move to his insides. Dean’s hand stilled for a second, and Sam’s eyes darted to their son quick enough to take in the sudden flinch and tremble of his bottom lip. 

“Damn it…” Sam swore under his breath. He opened his arms and motioned Marcus to come into the kitchen. “Come ‘ere, Monkey Boy.”

Marcus obeyed with a little less than his usual rambunctious enthusiasm, and that sent a whole different kind of pain shooting through Sam. He gathered Marcus close into his side and kissed him firmly, holding him close. 

“Papa didn’t mean to snap, baby. Really, I didn’t. I’m so sorry. I’m just…really uncomfortable right now, but I shouldn’t take it out on you. Ever.”

Marcus nodded against Sam’s chest and burrowed his nose in closer, then said in a tiny voice, “I didn’t know my wishing for a little brother or sister was going to hurt you so bad, Papa.”

“What?” Sam tugged him away a little, wrecked at the idea that their son thought it was his fault Sam was in so much pain. “No! No, no, no. This isn’t your fault at all, Marcus. Don’t you _ever_ think that. This is something your daddy and I wanted to do. It’s just not working out to be as easy as we’d hoped. But that has _nothing_ to do with you, you understand?”

Marcus nodded half heartedly, but Dean wasn’t convinced. He pulled the boy away from Sam’s side and into a big bear hug. “Marcus, you listen here…your papa wanted to do this even before you thought about having a little brother or sister, so this isn’t because of you, okay?”

Marcus nodded again, a little more convincingly, but cast worried eyes up at Sam. “Why does it hurt you so much, though?”

Sam smiled sourly. “Your sister is growing _really_ fast. Just as fast as you did inside Daddy’s belly, and it’s hard to keep up with her.” Sam reached out and took Marcus’ hand, pressing it to the front curve of his belly where little Jo was newly concentrating her efforts. “Feel that?”

Marcus’ eyes got big. “Wow! She moves around a _lot_. She should be lots of fun to play with!”

Sam grinned despite the bruising gymnastics session going on inside him, and Dean laughed out loud.

“I think you’re absolutely right,” he said, standing. “Now, how ‘bout some pancakes?”

Dean served up maple bacon pancakes with lots of butter and they sat down to eat. He kept half an eye on Sam the whole time, while Marcus rattled on about all his plans for teaching Jo the ins and outs of growing up after she was born, watching Sam get a shade paler every few minutes as he struggled to keep a good face on for Marcus’ sake. He reached across the table at one point, sliding his hand under Sam’s and letting him grip it hard, but when a thin rivulet of sweat worked its way down Sam’s temple, Dean drew a halt to the charade.

“Marcus, why don’t you go into the living room and turn on some cartoons for a bit?” Dean suggested.

“Okay!” Marcus happily hopped down from his chair and was ensconced on the couch with Bugs and Daffy in no time.

Dean came around the table, insinuating himself between Sam and any view Marcus might have from the other room, and bent to Sam’s ear. “Come on. Let’s get you into a bath.”

Sam nodded gratefully, letting out a long held breath, and let Dean gently draw him upward and support his weight down the hall to the bathroom. Sam sat on the toilet while Dean turned on the taps and got the water good and hot. 

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam said quietly.

“Sorry for what?” Dean asked, laying out a big fluffy towel and getting down the bath salts that Sam was partial to. 

“For snapping at him.” Sam’s voice was small and miserable, and Dean turned around sharply, squatting down in front of his little brother.

“Sam, don’t be sorry. It’s all right. You hurt. And he’s going to understand. It’s okay.”

“But he thinks it’s his fault!”

“Don’t worry about that,” Dean consoled. “We’ll be sure he knows otherwise.”

Sam groaned and rubbed at his belly again. “God, Dean, what have I gotten myself into?”

Dean covered Sam’s hand and smiled ruefully. “I tried to tell you.”

“I know you did, and I was just as stubborn as I always am and did it anyway, but…damn it! This hurts!” He curled forward slightly and a tear squeezed out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey. Hey, hey, now.” Dean took Sam’s face between his hands, smoothing over his cheekbones with his thumbs and pushing up to kiss his lips very softly. “Come on. Let’s get you in the water. It’ll help. I promise.”

Sam nodded, still gritting his teeth against the pain and let Dean undress him and hold him steady while he got into the tub. The water did help. The heat relaxed his tense muscles and the buoyancy took the pressure off his insides some. 

“I’m going to go clean up the kitchen and then I’ll be back, okay? Wash your hair for you?” Dean said.

Sam nodded, sighed, and slid down another inch into the water. He was feeling petulant and whiny, and he had a sinking sensation in his gut that he was failing some sort of test miserably. Dean had barked, and bitched, and grumbled through his whole pregnancy, but he’d never given into the pain. It had never gotten the better of him, and here Sam was with three weeks yet to go, and already collapsing into hapless, mewling heap. It was certainly only going to get worse from here, and he wasn’t at all sure how he was going to survive it. 

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets to force away the burn of tears and then hissed sharply as the baby caught him unawares again. He shifted in the water, rolling to his side, and then shifting further forward until he was on his knees with his belly freely suspended below him in the water, and that’s how Dean found him when he came back into the bathroom.

“Wow.” Dean gave a low whistle, looking appraisingly over Sam’s exposed backside. “That’s a nice view.”

“Don’t you dare tease,” Sam groused. It was muffled from where he was resting his cheek against his linked hands, elbows winged out and resting on each side of the tub to support his weight.

“Not teasing,” Dean said gruffly. “‘M serious.”

Sam twisted to look over at Dean and saw the slight part of his lips, the way his tongue flicked out to trace his bottom lip and the shudder of damped desire ripple through him as he took a breath. It had been a few weeks since they’d done anything. It wasn’t for lack of trying on Sam’s part. Dean was stubborning refusing, saying that nothing would make Sam’s heart go more crazy than a bout of heavy lovemaking, and he wasn’t taking that risk no matter how good a way it might be to go.

Sam arched his back a little, pushing his buttocks up further out of the water. Dean’s chest heaved once, and his eyes glinted darkly as his pupils expanded. 

“You could…wash my back for me,” Sam suggested innocently.

Dean made a sound deep in his throat, but shed his shirts and came over to kneel by the tub, taking up a washcloth and soaking it and rubbing it the length of Sam’s spine. Sam followed the movement of Dean’s hand, undulating his back and hips as Dean stroked up and down, water sluicing down the sides of Sam’s ribs and over his shoulders.

“Sammy…” Dean’s voice was rough and wrecked.

Sam lifted his head enough to look over the edge of the tub and see the huge straining bulge in the front of Dean’s jeans.

“Ouch,” he said breathily. Dean groaned.

The washcloth slipped from his fingers, but he continued to stroke, his hand moving lower and lower on Sam’s back, lingering longer, until finally Dean was cupping his ass and kneading it at the bottom of every stroke.

“Dean…” Sam moaned the last time Dean’s strong fingers dug into the supple muscles. He pushed his knees out to the edges of the tub, trying to open himself, offer himself to his brother. “Dean, please…”

Dean took the hint and let a finger dip and slide between Sam’s cheeks, stroking his tightly puckered hole. Sam moaned again, and pushed back toward Dean’s finger.

“Fuck, Sam,” Dean ground out, pushing his finger further down, testing the tightness of that ring of muscle with the pad of his fingertip.

“That’s the idea,” Sam said, rotating his hips a little and trying to squeeze at Dean’s probing digit.

Dean bit out a sharp curse, grasped the edge of the tub hard, and pushed his finger up inside Sam to the last knuckle. 

“Oh, God!” Sam arched, pushing back hard, fucking himself down on that finger. 

“Like that?” Dean asked gruffly.

“Yeah…oh, yeah…” Sam rocked on Dean’s finger, trying to ride it. His cock was fully hard and dragging through the water with his motions, little silky threads of pre-cum spinning out into the water. Dean pulled back for a few torturous seconds, and then Sam felt two fingers rammed inside him, stretching him open, curling forward, and…

“Fuck!” Sam bit down into the meat of his hand to stifle a cry as Dean massaged his prostate, sending sparks of fire shooting across his nerve endings and making his cock jerk hard, blurting out cum.

“Jesus, Sam. Jesus…” Dean could see Sam’s cock twitching in the water, translucent trails of cum whirling away into the turbulent patterns made by Sam’s frantic effort to fuck himself down harder on Dean’s hand. Dean groaned deep and long and jerked at his fly, thrusting a hand down to press against his own straining cock. The front of his boxers were already wet and sticky, and he was so fucking hard. He wanted nothing more than to slide up behind Sam in that water and shove his dick right up his ass and watch his brother buck and squirm and scream as he came, but neither of them were going to last the amount of time it would take for Dean to even get his clothes off.

Sam clenched his ass, squeezing down hard on Dean’s fingers. Dean retaliated by stroking over his prostate again and making Sam’s toes curl forcefully. “Dean, can you…? Please? I’m so close…so fucking close!”

Sam ended on a groan through clenched teeth as Dean withdrew again and then pushed three fingers up his ass, fucking him fast and hard, hitting his prostate on every stroke, until Sam was thrashing so hard that water was spilling over the edge of the tub. He was on all fours in the water now, head thrown back, back arched, ass high so that Dean could clearly see his own fingers sliding in and out of Sam’s tight, round hole. 

Dean was panting, leaking cum, strokes getting slick and hard and fast on his own cock as he matched up the rhythm of his hands sliding in and out of Sam and up and down his shaft.

“Dean! Oh, god….gonna come, Dean. Gonna come!”

Sam’s back bowed up like a cat’s and he grabbed the edges of the tub, thrusting back on Dean’s hand so hard Dean felt his knuckles crack, and he came in long pearly spurts in the water, groaning hugely with the release.

Dean grunted, biting down on his lip, hips locking forward and juttering hard as he came right along side Sam, striping the thighs of his jeans and the tile floor between his knees with cum. 

“Holy god…” Sam gasped, collapsing over the side of the tub. He hung there, panting for a long minute, eyes closed, face utterly lax.

“Yeah.” Dean extricated his fingers from Sam to a low moan and slight grimace on his brother’s part and then dropped down with his back to the tub, arms propped on his upraised knees. He rolled his head back and stared upward. “Good thing there’s a shower, too, ‘cause that bathwater ain’t getting anybody clean now.”

Sam huffed out a laugh, but it turned into a pinched gasp. Dean lifted his head, concern jerking at his brow. 

“You okay, Sammy?”

Sam slid back in the water, grimacing as he pressed a palm to his belly. “Yeah, but I’m not sure she was as pumped as we were about all the extra activity—ow!” Sam flinched hard and Dean was up on his knees and over the edge of the tub in a flash, hands all over Sam, trying to find the source of the pain, wanting to stop it.

“Sam?”

“No, no….” Sam breathed deeply, forcing himself to relax. “It’s fine. I’m fine. She caught me off guard is all.”

Dean stood up and stripped, reaching for the faucet, then reaching for Sam. “Lets get you rinsed off and then back to bed.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Laying in bed isn’t going to solve anything, Dean.”

“Okay, I’ll concede to the couch, but that’s it.”

“Dean….”

“Sam, you need to rest,” Dean said flatly, adjusting the spray over to hot and getting Sam under the arms and helping him stand before stepping in under the water himself.

“I’ve been resting for the last two weeks,” Sam said. “I haven’t  been any help to you at all, with Marcus or otherwise. I haven’t been doing anything!”

“Which is exactly what I _want_ you doing,” Dean emphasized. “Nothing.”

Sam opened his mouth to argue but was short circuited by another barrage from the baby. His fingers hooked into Dean’s shoulders, and he hung on, panting through the pain. Dean held tight to his elbows, waiting until Sam could straighten up again. The fear that had sparked in his gut almost seven weeks ago was starting to flare to life again. He pushed Sam’s wet hair out of his face and ducked down so he could look at him when he finally opened his eyes back up.

“She really working you over that hard?” he asked concernedly.

Sam gave a tight shake of his head. “No, not really. It’s like…. It’s hard to describe. I can’t even blame her really. The pain is just kind of all over. Sometimes it’s sharp, but it never fades all the way away?”

“You’re not talking about contractions are you?” 

“No. Nothing like that.”

Dean’s mouth was tightening into a hard line as Sam tried had to describe what he was feeling, but anything he would have said was aborted by yet another sharp pain that started in the vicinity of his hip and radiated outward. He gasped hard and clung to Dean.

“Shh, hey, I got you.” Dean soothed a hand over Sam’s head and shoulder. “Relax. Just breathe.”

“Jesus, I’m so pathetic!” Sam whimpered.

“What? Sam, of course, you’re not pathetic! What would even make you say that?” Dean pulled his brother close and gently but efficiently started to scrub shampoo through his hair while still managing to support most of his weight.

Sam leaned into Dean, letting his strong fingers massage over his scalp, countering the constant pressure, pain, and ache that seemed to have consumed him from the chest down to his pelvis. “Because I’m not handling this well at all,” he said miserably.

“Sam, you’re doing fine.”

“No, I’m not. I’m snappy and whiny and complaining all the time.”

“First of all—no, you’re not. Second, I seem to remember doing pretty much exactly the same thing,” Dean said, gently turning Sam into the water so he could rinse his hair, careful to cup a hand at his hairline to keep the water out of his eyes.

“No, you didn’t,” Sam insisted. “Sure, you bitched and swore, but you were beating the pain. It never got the better of you.”

Dean shook his head slowly. “Oh, Sam, you have no idea…”

He finished rinsing them both and bundled Sam into the bedroom to dry and dress him. Sam sat back against the headboard while Dean pulled on fresh clothes. He chewed on his lip and finally said in a small voice,

“Dean, I think I’d like to send Marcus to Bobby’s. Just until after the baby comes.”

Dean looked up sharply. “Why?”

Sam shrugged uneasily. “I don’t want to hurt him anymore.”

Sam was near tears again, keeping his gaze focused to his knees, Dean knew because if he looked up the tears would start free flowing down his cheeks. Dean crawled across the bed and settled in beside Sam, looping an arm around his shoulders. 

“Sam, you’re not hurting him. You’re not doing anything any different than anyone in your situation would do.”

“I’ve already scared him to death getting sick like I was,” Sam complained. “And I’ve been nothing but snappy with him. I don’t want him to see me like this! This isn’t me!”

Sam was starting to get frantic, hyperventilating a little in his sudden upset. Dean pulled him tight into his arms and rocked him. “Whoa, whoa. Come on. Breath easy, now. It’s going to be okay.” He kissed Sam’s forehead and eyebrows and settled his cheek on top of his head, still rocking them both. “I think you’re completely full of shit on this one, but if it’ll help you, Sammy, I’ll call Bobby. I’m sure he won’t mind. But I really think you’re short changing Marcus. He’s going to be more hurt that you’re sending him away.”

Sam shook his head against Dean’s chest. “It’ll be better this way. I don’t want him to be hurt and be afraid of me.”

“He won’t, Sam. You’re his dad.”

“I’m a horrible parent!”

Dean sighed, a little frustrated. “Now, you are being ridiculous.” Sam jerked his head up, shocked and staring. Dean just shook his head. “Sam, it’s not always going to be a bed of roses. He’s going to do things that piss you off so much you’d like to lock him in a Devil’s trap for the rest of his life, and you’re going to do things and make him do things that he’s going to wish to send you to Hell for, but that’s all part of it.” He cupped Sam’s jaw, smiling. “Look at you and Dad. You two were oil and fire, feeding off each other until the roof damn near came off most nights.”

“I hated him for so long,” Sam murmured. 

“Sure you did,” Dean acknowledged, “and Marcus is going to think the same of us for a while. But no matter how bad it got, Dad always loved you, and you loved him, too.” 

Sam just nodded, too choked up to speak. 

“Now, if you’re still sure it’s what you want to do—if it’ll help _you_ —then I’ll explain to Marcus, and he’ll be fine. Okay?”

Sam nodded again. “Please?”

“All right, Sam. All right.”

——

Dean made arrangements with Bobby for Marcus to stay with him for the next three weeks until Sam delivered and though Bobby agreed with Dean that Sam was pretty much imagining how awful he was handling things and how terrible he was treating Marcus, he didn’t say a word except to ask when Dean would be over with his favorite grandson.

“Sam, I don’t want to leave you alone,” Dean said from the hallway where he leaned, keeping half an eye and ear over his shoulder on Marcus, who was packing a bag in his room which Dean would probably end up repacking, but he figured it was good to foster the kid’s independence.

“Dean, I’ll be fine,” Sam said from the couch where he was swathed in a blanket and nested in pillows. He wasn’t terribly convincing though, since he’d hardly been able to sleep the night before, and he was pale and had dark circles under his eyes. “It’s not like you’re going to be gone all day. I can survive a few hours.”

Dean pushed off the wall and pulled his cell from his pocket. “I’m calling Jody.”

“Dean, don’t. She’s got other things to do. She doesn’t need to be babysitting me.”

But Dean already had the phone to his ear and was turning away into the kitchen.

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and bit the inside of his cheek to keep from snapping at Dean that he was not a child and did not need a keeper, realizing full well that it was his own childish behavior that had started this string of events in the first place. He was copping out again, taking the easy road by sending Marcus to Bobby’s and even if Dean swore left, right, and sideways that he was okay with the decision if it was what Sam needed, Sam knew deep down it hurt Dean to send their son away at a time they should be coming closer together as a family. 

Sam pressed his knuckles into his temples. God. He was such a fuck up.

Dean’s hand slipped up under the hair at the back of Sam’s neck and he instinctively tipped his head back to press against Dean’s cool skin. Dean leaned down and feathered a collection of kisses along Sam’s hairline.

“Stop worrying, Sammy. It’s okay,” he said quietly, as if he’d been reading Sam’s mind. He sifted his hand through the hair above Sam’s ear and straightened up enough to look his brother in the face. “Jody will be here in half an hour.”

Sam didn’t try to argue. He knew it would be pointless anyway. He just nodded. “You should probably go check that he isn’t trying to take his entire Matchbox collection. I’ll wager he’s packed everything except what he actually _needs_.”

Dean smiled wryly and turned for the hallway. “You’re probably right.”

 

Jody showed up almost exactly thirty minutes later. She was still in her uniform, though she’d removed her holster and equipment belt, which meant Dean had caught her on duty or just coming off, and she was making an exception to be here with Sam. He felt guilty about that, but she came bearing a styrofoam box with a heaping portion of hot, fresh lamb with cucumber sauce and a paper bag of soft pita triangles from the amazingly authentic Greek deli in town, together with her usual carefree smile that clearly told everyone and anyone that no favor asked was ever too big or too small. 

“I should only be a couple of hours,” Dean said.

“It’s fine, Dean. You take whatever time you need. If you’ve got errands or anything, go ahead,” Jody said easily. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”

Dean smiled his gratitude and leaned down to Marcus. “Gonna give Papa hugs and kisses ‘bye?”

Marcus went over and crawled up on the couch beside Sam, giving him a very serious and appraising look before he suddenly threw himself into Sam’s arms. “I love you, Papa,” he whispered against Sam’s neck.

“Oh, baby…I love you, too. So much. Always and always. You remember that, okay?” Sam squeezed his eyes shut and buried his nose in Marcus’ hair.

Marcus nodded vigorously and pulled back after a moment, leaning far enough away from Sam that he could look down at the curve of his belly disappearing under the blankets. He leaned down and said in his most serious big brother voice. “You behave yourself and go easy on Papa, you hear Jo?”

Tears sprang to Sam’s eyes when Marcus turned his green gaze, so very like Dean’s, back up to meet his papa’s. Dean came up behind him, put a hand on his shoulder and leaned down to kiss Sam’s cheek. “Take’s after his Daddy, I guess,” he whispered. “I’ll be back soon.”

Sam nodded and watched them go, feeling already like he’d made a huge mistake in sending Marcus away, missing his son’s bright smile and wide, eager eyes before they even got all the way out the door.

“I’ve made it four years without ever feeling this uncertain and conflicted about being a good father,” Sam said as Jody brought in a tray laden with their lunch and set in on the couch between them. “So, what’s wrong with me now? Why does it feel like I can’t get anything right?”

Jody smiled in sympathy. “Sam, you’ve got a lot going on under the hood, right now. Even more than you’re consciously thinking about. How are you going to handle another baby? Are you going to be able to love them both equally—now, I know you’re instant answer is ‘yes, of course’, but believe me when I tell you the subconscious doubt is still there. Not to mention that you’re doing all this—physically and emotionally—in about a quarter of the usual time. How’s she treating you, by the way?”

Sam arched his back a little to ease another sharp twinge under his ribs before reaching for the plate Jody offered him. “Like she owns the place, which she pretty much does for now, I guess.”

Jody laughed outright. “Yeah, I remember that. I’d like to tell you it gets better once they’re on the outside, but it doesn’t, which you already know.”

Sam rolled his eyes and scanned the room, nodding. There were movies stacked, only a little haphazardly, by the television, toys in baskets in the corner, a veritable library of picture books leaning against nearly every available surface. Marcus was already an excellent reader and his mind was as much of a sponge for information as Sam’s. “Tell me about it.”

“How’s the addition coming?”

Sam glanced at the tarped-over doorway off the living room. “Good. Dean’s just about ready to paint he says. He won’t let me see it. Say’s it’s a surprise.”

“Will you have enough time to get Marcus’ room redone?”

“Probably not until after Jo gets here, but that’s okay. Dean wants to put her in our room in a bassinet to start with anyway,” Sam said.

Jody raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. He didn’t do that with Marcus, did he?”

“No, but he’s been…different this time.”

“How’s he holding up with all of this?”

“He’s good, I think,” Sam said, eyes defocusing a little as he thought about how much more connected Dean seemed to feel this time around; the way he was always touching Sam’s belly one way or another, resting his hands on it while he slept; the way he whispered kisses across it and chatted in comfortingly ordinary one-sided conversations with the baby when he thought Sam was asleep. 

“I don’t know if it’s because he’s worrying about me so much, or if he’s just learning to appreciate everything in hind sight now that he knows more or less what’s coming and how, but he’s a lot more involved than I thought he would be.

“I mean, I knew he would be hovering over me all the time. That was a given. He always has, but he’s really…bonded with Jo.” Sam paused to rub a hand over the swell of his belly. “Like I wanted him to be able to do with Marcus before he was born.”

“Well, at least he’s had the chance,” Jody said fondly, “even if he’s coming to it a bit late. I’m glad.”

“Yeah, me too.”

They finished eating in companionable silence and then chatted about the various differences in raising boys versus girls, even though Jody only had experience with her only son who had died—more accurately been killed by Sam himself, but he didn’t like to think too hard about that—she did have three beautiful nieces whom she spent quite a bit of time with as they were growing up.

About three o’clock Sam rolled his shoulders and started to sit up. “Jody, would you mind if we went out on the porch? It’s feeling a little stuffy in here. I think I’d like some fresh air.”

Jody frowned a little as she didn’t feel particularly stuffy at all, but maybe it was being bundled up in the blanket and nested in all those pillows. She slid forward and offered Sam a hand up. “Sure. I don’t mind at all.”

“Thanks, I—.” Sam was cut off by a hot, sharp pain that cut across his side and down to his hip. He bit back a cry and hunched in on himself.

“Sam? You okay?” Jody was off the couch and on her knees in front of him.

He breathed in and let it out slowly, but was cut off again by a similar pain on the opposite side. “Ow. Damn it…!” He tried to straighten, to stretch out his muscles which were probably spasming in complaint of being cooped up in one position for so long, but the second he moved he was assailed by yet another stabbing pain under his sternum.

“Sam, talk to me. Are you having contractions?”

“N-no. No. Just hurts.” Sam flinched again, hard. He wrapped his arms around his belly and curled forward with it. “Was like this yesterday, too.”

“Have you called anybody? Did this happen to Dean?”

“Don’t think so. Not that he said anyway.” Sam pressed a palm to a particularly cutting pain on the top curve of his belly. He was having trouble getting his breath. His heart was hammering so loud he was surprised Jody couldn’t hear it, but it was a slow and painful pound that was making the edges of his vision go blurry and gray.

Jody was on her feet with her phone to her ear after one look into Sam’s greying complexion. “Dean? Hey, how far away are you? Yeah…. Sam’s in quite a bit of pain. He says it’s not contractions, but I’m pretty concerned here. He seems a little short of breath, too…. Do you want me to call somebody? Eliza? Okay, yeah I have her number. Will do.”

Jody turned to Sam. “Dean’s about thirty miles away. I’m going to call Eliza. We may need to take you in to see her.” Sam could only nod through the pain swamping him. “I’m really not feeling good about this, Sam.”

Well, that made two of them, Sam thought as he tipped back into his cocoon of pillows and concentrated on breathing steadily as the lower two thirds of his body was overtaken by a collection of cramps and spasms and aches, littered liberally with sharp cuts and stabs of outright pain.

Dean had either somehow gotten the Impala to sprout wings, or Sam had lost his sense of time because when he opened his eyes again, Dean was on his knees in front of hims, leaning over, eyes dark and intense with concern. His jacket was still on and his hands were chilly through the thin material of Sam’s t-shirt as they caressed Sam’s belly.

“Damn, Sammy…how long has she been at this?” Dean asked, voice cracking with sympathetic pain as their daughter kept up the constant row inside the compressed quarters of Sam’s middle. 

“Don’t know. Half hour?” He glanced upward at Jody, where she stood behind his shoulders, for some kind of confirmation. 

“About thirty-five, forty minutes, yeah,” she said.

“And Eliza said she was coming?” Dean asked.

“Yes.” Jody checked her watch. “Should be here right about…” 

The crunch of tires on dried leaves outside alerted them to Eliza’s arrival and Jody went to answer the door.

Eliza came in armed with a very large pack of compact equipment. “Pretty much a portable emergency room,” she explained to Jody’s impressed stare.

“I need one of those for the station,” she whistled.

Eliza smiled, but went straight for Sam, kneeling down beside him. “Sam? You with me?”

“Y-yes,” Sam forced out between his clenched teeth. He was fighting the urge to writhe and cry out with the pain. Dean was on the couch beside him, sifting his fingers into Sam’s hair in a constant, nervous rhythm as much to comfort himself as Sam.

“Okay. I need you to talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling, and don’t be macho with me. I can’t help you if you don’t tell the truth.” She was unpacking equipment, plugging in wires, setting out syringes and IV lines in case she needed them.

“Fucking hurts!” Sam finally gave in a little and rolled to his side, tears squeezing from under his lashes, curling around his  belly and as far into Dean’s lap as he could get.

“Sammy…” Dean wrapped him up and held him, voice a ruined whisper in the face of being so helpless to stop what was hurting his brother so much.

“Where does it hurt, Sam?” Eliza asked calmly.

“Everywhere!” Sam curled up tighter.

“Nothing localized? Nothing recurring? What kind of pain is it? Tearing, stabbing, achy?”

“All of those.” Sam whimpered, turning his face further into Dean’s chest.

Dean met Eliza’s gaze over Sam’s head, his eyes were broken open and shining with tears he wanted to shed in place of Sam’s. Anything to take his brother’s pain away. He swallowed thickly. “It wasn’t like this for me. It hurt all the time toward the end, but it wasn’t like this. Not this severe.”

“Was, too,” Sam whined. “You’re just stronger….”

Dean shushed Sam and urged him to unfurl a little so that Eliza could check his blood pressure, heart rate and other vitals. Her face remained impassive as she worked.

“Everything is…borderline. Not outside anything I would call normal given how much pain you’re in, Sam, but definitely not optimal. You’re heart rate is elevated, but that comes with extreme pain, I’m sure you know that. The baby’s is as well. She’s not in any danger, but she is stressing, and I think that’s what’s causing all this. I think you’re having some sort of growth spurt.” She sat back on her heels and pulled a familiar tube of gel out of the pack. “Can you stretch out, Sam? I want to get a look at her. Make sure everything looks all right, take some measurements, okay?”

Sam unbent himself as best he could, stretching out on the couch, and Dean gently tugged his shirt up so Eliza could spread the gel and work the mini transducer across Sam’s taut belly. Looking at it now, Dean could almost swear it was stretched tighter and harder than it had been last night, nearly ready to split with the pressure from within. He grimaced at the memory of feeling like the wrong move or poke or pull was going to burst him open like a piece of overripe fruit. 

“Sam, lie still if you can,” Eliza was saying gently.

Sam was moaning unconsciously, fidgeting, hips rolling to try and relieve the pain and pressure. He forced himself still, but Dean could see what it cost him in the hard pull at the corners of his mouth and the deep set lines between his brows. He worked a hand down between Sam and the couch back and started kneading his fingers into Sam’s lower back, trying to relieve a little bit of the pain, or at least give him something else to focus on. Sam stilled a little more and let out a long sigh. His brow was still furrowed hard, but he seemed to breath just a little easier.

“Okay,” Eliza worked fast, taking advantage of Dean’s provided distraction. “Okay, everything looks fine. But, yes, she’s…quite a bit bigger than she was last week. What I wouldn’t do for a CT scan….”

“Not like we can just waltz him into a hospital, doc,” Dean said.

“No, I know, but it would let me get a lot more accurate measurements, and, honestly?” Eliza moved the wand again, frowning just a little. “I think her growth has accelerated to the point that she’s pushing up her due date.”

“By how much?” Dean asked, wrestling down the sudden rise of fear in his gut. 

“Possibly by a couple of weeks,” Eliza admitted. “We could be looking at a delivery by the end of the week. Sooner, if she keeps this up.”

“No. No, I’m not ready for that. For this!” Sam tried to sit up, hysteria working its way past the pain, but  Dean tugged him back.

“Sam, relax. We don’t know anything for sure. It’s gonna be fine. Besides…if you pop her out in less than a week, just think about how good you’ll feel afterward,” Dean said, trying to be optimistic. “And here you thought you were going to have to wait her out another three weeks.”

But Sam wasn’t taking the bait, his eyes were wide and terrified.  “I’m not ready, Dean. I’m not—I can’t—!”

Jody leaned over the couch back and took Sam’s hand. “Sam, sweetie, nobody is ever _ready_ for this. It’s just something you meet head on when it comes.”

Dean thumbed Sam’s jaw tenderly, his expression gone solemn and serious. “You think I was ready to have Marcus in the car that night on the side of the road?” Sam jerked his head to the side in a negative. “But we did it, didn’t we? _We_ can do it, Sammy. You and me. I promise.”

Sam finally opened his eyes and met Dean’s. 

Here was the man who had been his father and his brother, his friend and his protector, and finally his lover. This was the man who knew Sam’s heart, his soul, his body, like he had been born for no other purpose. Dean was Sam’s lifeline, his life _blood,_ his heartbeat, his soul-light. Dean had gone to hell for him. Come back from there for him, too. There were no lengths Dean wouldn’t go to to protect what he loved, and Sam trusted that. Dean could fix anything, make anything broken whole again. Sam believed. He had always believed.

“Okay,” Sam said softly. “Okay.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one may be subject to an edit, but I've read and re-read and can't make it work any better than it is for right now...

Over the next few days Dean came to count it as a blessing that they had taken Marcus to Bobby's because every waking moment and most of his sleeping ones, too, were spent taking care of Sam. 

Sam was in constant pain now. He could barely sleep because he couldn't stay sitting or laying down long enough to get any rest. His belly was getting visibly bigger every day so that it had surpassed comfortably filling both of Dean's hands inside of forty-eight hours. 

Sam wasn't hardly eating either, and it was all Dean could do to force fluids down him. This didn't make Eliza particularly happy as she reminded him every day when she stopped by to check his and Jo's progress. She kept urging him to eat because the extra strain on his heart coupled with his subterranean energy levels had him gasping and lightheaded just walking the few feet from the couch to the kitchen and back, and she warned him that he wouldn't make it through a natural delivery if he didn't have any energy for pushing. 

Sam tried his hardest, but he couldn't focus on anything except the pain until it was consuming his every waking moment. Dean tried to distract him with baths and massages and constant belly rubs which Sam in turn put every effort into trying to appreciate. Dean, for his part, was tired and angry and frustrated because he could not make it better and he couldn't make it stop and nothing scared him more than seeing his little brother suffer so much.

By the fourth day, Sam was feeling so wretched that by the time Dean got out of a record short shower and came back into the bedroom still dripping, because he was afraid to leave his brother alone for more than five minutes put together, he found Sam huddled at the end of the bed in the floor, holding his aching head, rocking his hips--because sitting still was completely impossible now--and sobbing. 

Dean squatted down. "Sammy, come on. Hold it together, baby boy. Just a little longer," he said. "Just a little bit longer. Think about what she's going to look like, what it's going to feel like to hold her in your arms, huh? Come on, Sammy focus for me. You gotta focus, Sam. You've got to try."

"I can’t,” Sam sobbed, shaking his head back and forth between his hands. “I can’t!”

Dean covered Sam’s hands and forced his head up. “You can, Sam. You can and you will. Now, come ‘ere.” 

Despite the fact that he was naked but for the towel slung low and precarious on his hips and still half wet from his shower, Dean wedged himself in behind Sam, splaying his thighs and pulling Sam back to rest against him, working his hands all along his brother’s sides, down to his hipbones, over to the inside of his groin and back up over his belly, keeping a constant pressure that would draw Sam’s attention and give him something to center on. 

“Deep breaths. Relax. Work with me here, Sammy,” Dean coaxed. 

“Hey,” he said after Sam had started to quiet just a little. “You remember that time when you were thirteen? That Scitha that took a chunk out of your shoulder?” Sam gave an arhythmic nod. “It had claws longer than a Wendigo. Thing just ripped you open like a Christmas present when your dumb ass got in its way.”

“It was gonna kill you,” Sam sniffled, breath steadying under Dean’s constantly moving hands.

“Yeah. Yeah, it probably was, but you got over me and lodged that knife of yours right in its gullet, gave Dad time enough to get the kill shot. That was an amazing throw, Sam. Don’t know if I ever told you that.”

Sam made a pleased sound in his throat. “Always was better with knives than you.”

“You were. Definitely. But that’s not my point. My point is that that thing damn near flayed your shoulder open. Dad was a thin inch from callin’ an ambulance, and I was yelling at him to take you to the hospital—.”

“You were so upset,” Sam mumbled into the side of Dean’s neck. “Never heard you yell at Dad that way before.”

“No. I don’t think I ever did. But…I thought you were gonna die, Sam. I was fucking terrified that you were gonna bleed out right there in front of me because of some damned over-developed hero complex you had about savin’ my sorry ass,” Dean said. “But my point—my point is, you never cried that whole time. Never once. You just kept asking me if I was okay. I was so… _pissed_ at you, for not staying back like Dad and I told you to, but I was proud of you, too, Sam. So proud of you.”

“Gotten soft in my old age.” Sam’s words were starting to slur, and Dean could tell that, by some miracle, he was actually drifting off to sleep. 

“That’s not what I meant,” Dean said more quietly. “What I meant was, you can do this Sam. I know that you can. All the shit you’ve seen and done? You got this. I believe in you.”

“Oh, Dean…” Sam’s voice cracked with the flood of emotion, but his eyelids were heavy and drooping, and he couldn’t find the energy to say more.

“Hush, Sam. Hush. Rest. I just—just wanted you to know that, okay?”

Sam murmured some kind of affirmative and tucked his face more securely into the curve of Dean’s neck. 

Dean suppressed a shiver, his bare skin still damp and chilled, but he’d be damned if he was moving Sam now that he was still and quiet and nearly asleep. It had to have been nearly seventy-two hours since Sam had actually slept. So, Dean just kept massaging and rubbing until he could hear the quiet rumble of Sam’s snores in his chest and then he paused just long enough to pull the comforter from the bed at their backs and wrap it around them both. His butt was already half asleep and his hips weren’t going to forgive him for this any time soon, but he didn’t give a damn about any of that if Sam could have just a few hours of deep, pain free sleep.

He tipped his head back against the bed and closed his eyes and dreamed of Scitha screaming in the night and blood.

 

Dean woke up to the sound of Sam moaning. 

The sun had come and gone and it was after seven o’clock in the evening. Dean blinked in the near dark, trying to adjust to the lack of light. Sam was twitching and moving restlessly in his embrace, long low moans escaping him every few minutes.

“Sam?” Dean hated to wake him. Even if he was hurting, he was at least still asleep. He cupped his palms around Sam’s belly and that’s when he felt it—a hard tightening of muscle. He paused, breath held, until he felt it again. “Fuck…” he hissed. “Sam? Wake up. You gotta wake up, baby boy.”

“Wha…?” Sam’s head lolled on Dean’s shoulder. 

Dean shook his head. Sam’s body must’ve acclimated to being is so much pain that he couldn’t recognize the contractions when they started. “Sam, it’s time.”

“Time for what?” he asked blearily, reaching to rub at his eyes, but his body answered the question for him, doubling him forward with a gasp, hands flattening on the sides of his tightening belly. “Ow! Fuck…that was…!”

“A contraction,” Dean supplied. “Yeah, I think so. Don’t know how long that’s been going on. You’ve been passed out since about eleven.” He shifted Sam forward as carefully as he could. “I need to get dressed and we need to get you to—.”

“Uh, Dean?”

“Yeah.”

Sam plucked at the legs of his lounge pants, eyes wide. They were soaked and plastered to the inside of his thighs. “I think….” His voice trailed off and he swallowed thickly.

Dean pressed a hand over his mouth. “Yup, time to go. Come on. We’ve got to get you changed and call Eliza. I want to get you to the clinic.”

“But it could be hours, Dean. I don’t want to spend them there.”

Dean shook his head again. “I’m not taking any chances here, Sam. We’re going. You’re just gonna have to make do.”

Sam didn’t argue. Dean was moving now with that clipped, high-definition efficiency that came over him whenever his mind grabbed onto something and focused down with laser accuracy on it. Right now that thing was Sam and their daughter and the safety of them both. When Dean was in this mode, there was no compromise and no quarter, so Sam just levered himself up off the floor with a minimal number of flinches and gasps and sat at the end of the bed and waited while Dean dressed on the move, phone pressed to his ear calling Eliza and Jody and Bobby.

Sam had made it clear he didn’t want anyone but Dean with him when he gave birth. It was going to be [embarrassing] enough as it was without an audience to watch, but they had promised to let Bobby and Jody know when Jo was about to make her appearance.

“You doin’ okay, Sam?” Dean poked his head back out of the closet where he was digging out a couple spare t-shirts and sweats for Sam and throwing them in a bag. 

Sam grimaced a little as another contraction screwed down into his lower back and squeezed its way around to the front of his belly. It hurt like a bitch, but it was strangely comforting, too. Predictable in a way the pain over the last week or so had not been. He knew where it was coming from and where it was going, and that it would end.

“Sam?”

Sam looked up, rubbing at the spot where the pain had come together just under his belly button. “I’m fine. Good, really.”

“Good?” Dean stopped long enough to give him a bug-eyed look. “You sure you’re all the way awake?”

Sam smiled tiredly. “Yeah, I’m awake. It just…I don’t know. It feels good. To know what to expect, I guess. At least the contractions are predictable, and in the end I get something out of it.”

Dean considered this for a long moment, still frowning, but he conceded with a shrug. “Okay. I guess I can understand that, but don’t get too comfortable…it’s gonna get worse.”

“Nice pep talk, Dean,” Sam grumbled.

“Sorry. It’s the truth. At least the way I remember it,” Dean said. 

It took about thirty minutes to get Sam cleaned up, changed, and into the car, during which time Dean carefully timed contractions on Eliza’s order. The fact that they’d started out at an iffy seven minutes between them and ended at four by the time Dean got them on the road could definitely have been said to be a contributing factor in his decision to bend the accepted speed limits. 

Sam was wedged against the passenger door, now an easy believer in Dean’s earlier tenet that the contractions were going to get worse, trying to ‘breath with the pain’ or some shit he’d probably read about, but he kept ending on a thready gasp or a wheeze. Dean reached across the car and pressed his hand to Sam’s chest. It wasn’t difficult at all to find the hard, heavy pound of his heart.

“Sam, you doin’ okay? Your heart’s really pounding, man.”

“I k-know,” Sam said, fighting to take air in or out, Dean wasn’t sure. He curled forward, grimacing, what air he had rushing out of him, arm going around his belly like he was trying to hold himself together. “Okay, I t-take it back…this _isn’t_ good.”

Dean smiled ruefully. “Told ya.”

Sam growled a little, but it was curtailed by another forceful contraction that had him grabbing at the dash and digging his fingers into the underside of his belly. The thing that worried Dean more than the increasing frequency and force of the contractions was Sam’s inability to catch his breath or keep it steady. When he did finally garner enough in his lungs to speak, he said,

“Dean, I think…you need to hurry. It feels like—oh, God!”

Dean dropped his hand to the top of Sam’s belly, felt the incredible tightening of muscle, saw how Sam kept unconsciously trying to spread his legs. “You need to push?”

Sam’s eyes popped open like this was the revelation he was looking for. He nodded sharply, jutting his hips forward, opening his thighs wide. “Yes! God, that’s it…I need to push!”

“Well, don’t,” Dean said flatly. “Just hold on, Sam. We’re almost there.”

Seven minutes later Dean fishtailed the Impala just slightly into the parking lot at the clinic and was surprised to see both Marissa and Bobby waiting.

Sam grimaced when both Dean and Bobby reached into the car to help him out, one under each of his shoulders and hobbled him to the clinic door where Marissa gave them a smile of greeting.

“I thought I…said no…audience,” Sam wheezed. “Where’s Marcus?”

“Don’t worry,” Bobby said. “Marcus is with Jody, and I’m _not_ comin’ in there. I just wanted to be here for…moral support.”

“Good to see you again, Marissa,” Dean said, casting her a questioning glance as they got Sam down the hallway and carefully scooted him up onto what looked like a cross between a bed and a chair with leg rests in the exam room.

“You, too. Eliza asked me to come. She wanted an extra pair of hands,” Marissa explained. “Just in case.”

“Hey, Sam,” Eliza said as she came into the room. “How’re you doing?”

Sam opened his mouth to answer, but it was aborted by another contraction that had him gasping and turning into Dean’s arms, hunching over his straining belly. Dean rubbed a hand up and down his back and answered for him, “The contractions are less than four minutes apart, and he says he feels like he needs to push.”

Eliza’s eyebrows went up slightly. “Impatient little girl there. Sounds like she’s in as much of a hurry to be born as she was to grow.”

“He’s having trouble catching his breath, too,” Dean said, chewing on the inside of his lip.

Eliza nodded. “Okay. Let’s get him undressed. I want to hook him up to to a couple of monitors and an IV. I’ve got some medication I want to give you, Sam. It’s going to help your heart and keep your airways open, okay?” Sam just nodded and let Dean and Marissa strip him down, Dean at least insisting on leaving him the dignity of his t-shirt since it wasn’t going to get in the way of anything. “Let’s have a look at you, Sam, see just how eager this little girl is to make an appearance.”

Marissa worked around Sam, sticking down sensor pads and hooking up an embarrassing number of electronics at the opposite end of all the leads and put an IV into his hand along with three different injections that she rattled off the name and purpose of which Dean’s brain neither wanted nor cared to remember. Eliza gently spread Sam’s legs, coaxing his heels into the stirrup cups and urging his knees apart. Dean flinched in sympathy at the exposure. It had been bad enough in the dark of the Impala with only Sam between his legs witnessing his body distorting itself in ways he still didn’t even want to imagine; but here under the clearly revealing soft yellow lights of the exam room, Sam was completely open to Eliza’s observation.

She gave a short, tiny whistle. “I bet this is the only time in the history of medicine I get to see this happen.” She sat up a little with a smile meant to lighten the mood, and patted Sam’s knee. “Unless you decide to do this again?”

Sam shook his head. “No!”

Eliza’s smile broadened. She put both hands on Sam’s knees and waited until she had his attention. “Sam, I’m going to examine you, to see how much you’ve dilated, and it’s probably going to feel…. Well, for you, I won’t lie, I imagine it’s going to feel really weird.”

Sam just nodded and bit the inside of his lip against another contraction, moaning low and hard with it. Dean hovered at his shoulder, unable to quite find his way past all the wires and IV lines to a place he could wrap himself around Sam and offer him whatever support he needed. Marissa put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Dean, why don’t you move over to the other side. I’ll shift the monitors around. That way you don’t have to worry about the IV.”

Dean nodded his gratitude and moved around the table. Eliza was sliding her hands down the insides of Sam’s thighs to ease him into her presence in an area where he wasn’t accustom to anyone but his brother touching him, and Dean folded his hands around Sam’s.

“How ya doin’?” he asked.

Sam flinched as Eliza’s fingers found the newest addition to his anatomy and probed upward. He tilted his hips against the intrusion, but Eliza just patted the inside of his thigh.

“Relax for me, Sam. I know it’s uncomfortable. Just relax.”

Sam forced himself to sink back into the exam bed and looked up at Dean. “I don’t like this.”

Dean let out a dry laugh. “I hear ya. Wasn’t my favorite part either. How do you feel?” Dean looked up at the monitors, all beeping away, glanced at Marissa. “How’s his heart?”

“His heart’s fine,” Marissa answered. “The medication is helping, and it’s not like it’s weak, just stressed. I think he’s going to be just fine. Can you breathe easier now, Sam?”

Sam took a tentative deep breath and looked relieved. “Yes. I can.”

“That’s good,” Eliza said, “because you’re going to need all the deep breaths you can manage here real soon. You’re fully dilated and that little girl is awfully eager to see you.”

Sam didn’t have a chance to acknowledge the good news before another contraction twisted through the muscles of his lower back and rippled across the hard swell of his belly to end on an incredible urge to bear down. He pitched forward, yanking on Dean’s strong grip.

Dean held on tight, watching Sam’s tense face anxiously while he grunted into the contraction.

“Take is easy, Sam,” Eliza crooned. “Don’t use up all your energy yet. This is going to take a while. Work with the pain when you feel it, but don’t let it get the upper hand.”

Sam dropped back, breathing heavily but steady, none of the monitors objecting to the pace of his heart which had Dean sighing in unconscious relief.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, Sam?”

“This sucks.”

Dean laughed and smoothed a stray strand of hair from Sam’s eyes. “I know, but just think. In a little bit, she’s gonna be in your arms, and…I can’t lie, Sammy. There’s nothing like it in the world.”

Sam nodded but couldn’t answer for the next contraction that locked up his jaw and sent him straining forward again. He tried to focus his pushing, following the path of the pain to the spot between his legs where he could feel the pressure of the baby’s head against his opening. When the pain let up, he toppled back, frustrated.

“She’s not moving,” he said, looking a little desperately first at Dean and then Eliza. 

“It’s a slow process sometimes, Sam,” Eliza assured him. “She’s coming down. I promise. You’re doing great. Keep pushing just like you were, slow and steady. I’ll let you know when you need to give it everything you’ve got, okay?”

 

Three hours later, Dean was up on the bed behind Sam, palms spread over his contracting belly, whispering words of encouragement in his ear while Sam’s resolve slipped a little more with every unproductive contraction. He was making progress, but it was incredibly slow, and while his heart was holding out well, his energy reserves were nearly depleted. 

Dean could feel the contractions under his hands, the fierce downward squeeze of muscles that Sam leaned into grunting and groaning every time, pushing with them until he was nearly grey and gasping and on the edge of passing out. His own belly was squeezing in painful sympathy, but he ignored it and focused on Sam as he collapsed out of yet another contraction.

“That’s it, Sam, you’re doing great,” he encouraged, stroking his hands against Sam’s belly, soothing the hard, taut swell.

“Yes, you are, Sam,” Eliza added. “I expect her to crown here really soon if you can keep pushing just like that.”

Sam lolled his head against Dean’s shoulder, silent tears leaking out the corner of his eyes. “Dean, I don’t think I can…it just hurts so damn much! And she’s not coming….”

“She is, Sam. I promise you she is,” Eliza assured.

Dean tightened his hold on Sam momentarily. “You can do this, Sam. You can. You’re doing fantastic.”

“God, I’m not. I’m _so_ not,” Sam moaned. “I—.”

Sam pitched forward with another contraction, grunting, straining to push hard enough to move the baby downward; but half way through he twisted to the side, air suddenly knocked out of him, and fell back against Dean’s chest.

“Sam?”

Sam gasped, arms locking around his belly. “That wasn’t—that wasn’t right!”

“Wasn’t right, how?” Eliza asked. “What did you feel?”

Sam groped for the words, trying to find the sensation amid all the lingering ache and pain from the last hours of constant contractions and pushing. He felt another contraction building in his back, but it was suddenly half the intensity of the ones that had come before it, and the feeling that had come at the height of that last one was like—.

“Tearing!” he blurted out as the next contraction wrapped itself around him. He arched in Dean’s arms with the pain, moaning low and hard, but the urge to push was minimal. The pressure against his pelvis was sliding back and away.

“Marissa, I need you,” Eliza said sharply. “We’ve got blood here.”

Marissa responded instantly, going to Eliza’s shoulder. “Rupture?” 

Eliza gave a tight nod, her eyes flashed for an instant before she locked down on her expression, but it was enough for Dean to see.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”

Eliza didn’t move from between Sam’s legs, but her level of activity and the intensity of her movements suddenly increased by about four hundred percent. “Sam, our time’s up. I need to get the baby out right now. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to do a C-section.”

“What!” Dean’s hands clenched around Sam’s belly. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Dean?” Sam’s eyes were panicked, but dazed. His face was going pale, and he felt suddenly clammy in Dean’s embrace.

“Sam? Sam, you okay?” Dean glared down at Eliza. “What the fuck is going on?”

The monitor’s suddenly started to go off, and Marissa was on the move. 

“Dean, I need you to get off the bed, please.”

“I—.”

“Now.” 

Dean obeyed the sharp edged authority in her voice and slid out from behind Sam, but kept hold of him, kept one hand on his belly that suddenly didn’t feel quite right. The hard, tense feel was gone.

“Dean….” Sam’s eyes were rolling back, his mouth going slack.

Dean’s insides twisted up in terror. “Sammy?”

“Dean, can you step outside please, just for a minute,” Marissa said as she put injection after injecting into the IV port in Sam’s hand. “We need to work fast here.”

“Why?” Dean demanded. “I’m not going fucking anywhere until you tell me what’s going on! What’s wrong with him?”

“Dean….” Sam’s voice was a bare whisper now. His eyes dropped closed and his head lolled to the side.

“Sammy!” Dean made a grab for Sam’s hand. 

“Dean, please. Go. We’ve got to act fast. Now, I need you to go,” Marissa insisted.

“No!” Dean roared. He pushed back against Marissa, for the first time in his life taking it into serious consideration to hit a woman because she was standing between him and Sammy and no one got to do that, not even Satan himself. 

“Is everything all right in here?” Bobby’s tentative voice came from a crack in the door. “I heard all the monitors, and—.” He spied Dean shoved up in Marissa’s space and Sam unmoving on the table. “Dean, what’s goin’ on?”

“Mr. Singer,” Marissa said sternly. “Will you please step back outside and take Dean with you.”

Bobby put a hand on Dean’s shoulder to draw him back, tightened it when he felt the boy’s muscles bunch for a fight. “Dean, I think we need to leave—.”

“No, God damn it! I’m not leaving him!”

“Dean.” Eliza’s voice was hard and sharp. “Sam is losing a lot of blood, and I’ve got to operate right now to save your daughter’s life, and I need _you_ out of this room.”

“Save her—?” Dean’s chest constricted and his knees went weak. Instead of holding him back, Bobby was suddenly holding him up. “Sam! What about Sam? He…I can’t…. You have to—.”

“Sam is going to be fine if you let me do my job,” Eliza said.

Dean sagged, curled in on himself, felt Bobby starting to drag him away. 

“Dean, come on, son. Let them work. Let them do what they need to. Sam’ll be all right,” Bobby coaxed, hoping to hell he was telling the truth.

Dean wouldn’t go further than the other side of the door, so Bobby didn’t try to take him out to the clinic’s waiting room. Instead, he leaned against the wall, while Dean alternately paced the the short hallway, stood with his hand pressed against the door that Sam and his daughter were on the other side of, and squatted down with his head knocked back against the wall, waiting for a word, a sound.

The silence was eery and disconcerting and made Dean’s stomach roll to the point he thought he might be physically sick. Screams would have been preferable at this point, something to help him form up an image of whatever might be going on behind that door. Right now, all he could see was Sam’s slack grey face passed out on the bed…and the blood.

He’d spotted it before Bobby pulled him back. The blood all over Eliza’s hands, soaking up her sleeves and running in a sickly steady little stream onto the floor from between Sam’s legs. Dean gagged and swallowed back against the bile at the back of his throat.

“You okay, son?” Bobby asked, seeing Dean hunch over and press a hand to his stomach.

Dean just shook his head, breathing in and out, trying to push away the image of his little brother’s blood pouring out of him. 

He lost track of time. He could have been in that hall for hours, or maybe just minutes, before he heard a thin little wail from behind the door.

His head snapped up, and his eyes smarted with sudden tears. The cry sounded pathetic and tired and frightened, and Dean’s arms ached to try and sooth his daughter’s distress. He waited, counting seconds in his head, gaze locked on the door, listening for anything more than that crying. Listening for Sam’s voice. Sam would be so upset that they were letting her cry like that. If he was awake, he’d be moving Heaven and Hell to stop that crying, Dean just knew it. If he was….

“Dean?” Marissa was standing in the door, a swaddled bundle in her arms. 

Dean searched her eyes desperately. _Please, don’t be offering me a consolation prize…_

“Sam?” he managed to croak out.

Marissa smiled. It was calm and sincere. “He’s okay. He lost a lot of blood, and he’s going to have one hell of a scar, but he’s okay. He should be starting to come around in the next few minutes.”

Dean’s whole body sagged, and it was a good thing Bobby’s reflexes were still Hunter sharp, because Dean would have wound up in the floor if he hadn’t caught him and steadied him.

Marissa came forward with her bundle and offered it up to Dean. “Do you want to say hello?”

Dean took the baby—his daughter—into his arms and cradled her close, but his heart was still pounding. “Sam…please. I need to see him.”

Marissa nodded her understanding and held open the door for Dean to go through.

The blood was blessedly gone, probably bundled away in the bio-hazard bin in the corner, but Dean could still smell it. He’d smelled a lot of blood in his lifetime, and Sam’s had a particular scent. It was still in the air and his stomach lurched at it. But Sam was clean. He was pale and still under the blanket propped up on a few pillows, but he was clean at least. 

“What happened?” Dean asked.

Eliza came up behind him. “I think it was the sudden growth spurt at the end. She was developing so rabidly that Sam’s body couldn’t quite keep up. I think the uterine wall thinned too much as it was stretching and when the contractions started in earnest, it ruptured. That’s my theory anyway.”

Dean nodded, not understanding all of that, not necessarily wanting to. It didn’t matter now. Sam was breathing under the blanket, and their daughter was tucked safely in Dean’s arms. He looked down at her.

“Hey, little girl,” he murmured. “How are you?”

Jo was tiny, as small or smaller than Marcus had been, but her face was smoother, prettier, her skin paler. Her eyes were just barely open, showing tiny slices of bright blue that Dean would be eagerly watching to see if they faded into mossy green or soft hazel or some heart stopping blend of the two. Her mouth was small and pink and perfect, a delicate little heart shape under her tiny nose. Dean touched a finger to her bottom lip, and she rooted around the pad until she latched on and sucked softly, tiny fists working up to tuck under her chin.

“Dean…”

Dean’s heart tripped in his chest at the sound of Sam’s faded voice and dropped him into the chair Marissa had thoughtfully pulled up beside the bed. 

“Dean, is she…?”

Dean lifted Jo up and tilted her so that Sam could see her content little face. “She’s perfect, Sam. So beautiful.” He pressed a kiss to Sam’s temple, let his lips linger there. “Just like her papa.” 

Sam smiled tiredly. “If she’s lucky, she’ll look like you.” He paused. “Can I…?”

Dean immediately relinquished Jo to Sam’s eager arms, remembering that frantic need to take hold of the life that had only moments ago been inside of him, even though he wouldn’t have admitted it at the time. Sam settled Jo into the crook of his shoulder, looking down at her like she was the answer to every question in the universe, the purpose for gravity and the sun rising and setting, like she was the tether that would hold him down to earth from now on.

“Sam?”

Sam looked up at Dean, saw the naked, desperate need on his face and reached up to cup his jaw and drag him down into a kiss.

Dean gave up. He folded up on Sam’s chest, curling as much of himself around his brother and their daughter as he possibly could without crawling right up beside him on the bed. Then he cried. 

It was the quiet kind of crying, the kind that came when the heart was so full it couldn’t stand the strain anymore and finally just opened up and let it all out. Sam held him, looping an arm around his shoulders tightly and whispering to him, nonsense intermingled with I-love-you’s and words like ‘always’ and ‘forever’ that Dean didn’t normally ever want to hear. 

“Jesus, Sam, please… _please_ don’t ever do that again,” Dean mumbled against Sam’s chest where he’d finally laid his cheek so that he could peer over at Jo’s little sleeping face. “I can’t—I don’t think I could—If you were to—.”

“Shhh,” Sam murmured. “Shhh. I’m not going anywhere, Dean, and I think this experience…has been enlightening enough.”

Dean glanced up. Sam was grinning. It was tired, but it was the first one he’d worn in a few weeks, and his dimples were just peeking out. Dean grinned back. “I did try to warn you.”

Sam rolled his eyes and tucked both Jo and Dean closer in to his chest. “Whatever. Jerk.”

“Bitch,” Dean retorted softly and leaned up to kiss Sam again. “Love you, Sammy.”

Sam nuzzled into the soft spot under Dean’s ear. “Love you, too, Dean.”


	5. Epilogue

Sam stretched long on the couch, then flinched and let out a low hiss.

“Hey, take it easy, tiger,” Dean mumbled sleepily, hand automatically going to Sam’s stomach where the long angry scar from Jo’s birth was still healing and caressing gently.

“It’s been three weeks,” Sam protested grumpily, waiting for the sting and pull of his sudden movement on the scar to fade away before more cautiously unfurling himself and settling across Dean’s thighs. “I’ve healed up faster than this from werewolf claws.”

“Sam, she had to cut through a major muscle group and that’s one hell of an incision.”

Eliza had had to opt for a lateral incision because of Jo’s position inside Sam to get her out when his uterine wall had suddenly ruptured at the peak of a contraction, and he had started bleeding out. Dean shuddered at the memory and opened his tired eyes to stare at the fire and maybe try and burn the image completely from his brain.

“Yeah, the girls are gonna go nuts over it,” Sam teased lightly, but when he got no pithy response or half-hearted punch to the shoulder from his brother, he looked up. “Dean?”

Dean was still staring into the fire, absently stroking unerringly along the ridge of flesh under Sam’s t-shirt that ran from just a few inches under his sternum to his pelvis. Sam caught his hand and brought it to his lips.

“Dean, I’m right here.”

Dean shuddered again and looked down at Sam. “I know. I know. I just…. Jesus, Sam, I almost lost you. I could have lost you both.” He dipped his head, shook it to rattle out the awful possibilities. “What would I have done then?”

Sam rolled to his side and eased into a sitting position. “You’ve seen me bleed before, Dean.” He gave a wry little smile. “And I didn’t even die this time.”

The earned Sam a sharp look. “I know it. This was…different, though.”

“Different, how?” Sam wasn’t asking ignorantly or to be mean. Dean wouldn’t be able to let this go until he fully faced it and understood in his own mind what the difference was.

“I don’t know if I can put it into words, Sammy. Before, when you…died. It was just me that suffered—well, Bobby, too—but it was only me that you really left behind. My heart was the only one that was ruined, and I could solve that by giving up my soul to bring you back. Or just taking a swan dive somewhere,” Dean said. Sam squeezed his hand painfullly in warning, but Dean just shrugged. “Face it, kiddo. I got past being able to live without you about two seconds after you were born. That’s just the truth.”

Sam had to blink furiously and hold his breath to keep a sudden sob at bay.

Dean looked past Sam’s shoulder to where Marcus was asleep in the big overstuffed armchair angled at the end of the couch. Jo was nestled in beside him, corralled by pillows and her brother’s body. He sucked in a stuttering breath and chewed on the inside of his cheek. Sam could tell he was near tears himself.

“If something happened to you now, Sam, I wouldn’t be the only one to suffer. It wouldn’t be just me that lost out. And it’s not like I could go and sell my soul again—not that they’d take it—‘cause that would make me a pretty irresponsible dad,” he looked Sam straight in the eye, “and I don’t want to be that.”

Dean pulled Sam in, settling his chin on top of his head. “I couldn’t keep going, Sam, but I’d have to, and that would hurt. It would be more than I could stand, I think, to have to watch them hurt, too, everyday; to have them suffer just like we did.”

Sam didn’t miss the implications in the similarities between the ages of their children now and how old they had been when Yellow Eyes had gotten to their mom. He pulled back to look into Dean’s face. “Is that what this is? You’re afraid what happened to us is going to happen to them?” Dean didn’t say a word, but Sam could see the answer in the flash of fear in his eyes. Sam looped his arms up behind Dean’s shoulders and held him tighter. “Dean, that’s all over. It’s been over. There’s no more Yellow Eyes out there to taint the blood of our children or anyone else’s.”

Dean dropped his head into the crook of Sam’s neck. “It happened once, Sam. It could happen again.”

“Don’t think that, Dean. You can’t.” Sam started rocking them back and forth just the littlest bit, just a comforting rhythm to distract him. “It’ll kill you if you think about stuff like that. Anything—anything!—could go wrong over the next how-many-ever decades we manage to live through, and if you try and think about all of it, or worse try and stop it, then it’ll kill you, Dean. You have to let it go. You have to just… _be here_ , right now, with us. We love you, and we need you with us. Now and always.”

They sat in silence, wrapped in each other, rocking back and forth, Dean breathing warm and a little unevenly against Sam’s throat, until he finally lifted his head and pressed his lips to Sam’s ear. “Dude…you are _such_ a girl.”

Sam grinned broadly and slapped his brother playfully across the the back of the head. “Only when you need me to be.”

Dean shrugged and pulled away. He was smiling. It was a little watery at the edges, but it was still a smile, and Sam could live with that. He slid down Dean’s chest a little and twisted carefully so that he could see his son and daughter nested in the big chair only a couple of feet from them.

“Suppose we ought to take them to bed?”

Dean followed Sam’s gaze over to his sleeping children. Marcus had positioned himself all along the bottom edge of the cushion, effectively hemming Jo in so that there was no chance she might roll off of it even if she was old enough to have pulled off such a stunt to begin with. His little arm was slung over her bundle of blankets, hand resting somewhere in the vicinity of her heart, and Jo in turn had a firm hold on his pinky finger while she slept on, her tiny mouth working in soft, wet little sounds that he knew was a precursor to her waking up in not too long demanding to be fed.

“Nah, just let them sleep. He’s got her.”

“I can see that,” Sam said meaningfully.

Dean pressed a kiss to Sam’s temple and gave his shoulders a hard squeeze. “Runs in the family, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Sam smiled. “I guess it does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be the end of the Part, but it's not the end of the story... :)


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